Very Computer

When I first installed Linux, I set aside 500 mb to eventually install
Windows.  Now I have decided not to install Windows and just run
Linux. How do I add the 500 mb of free space to my Linux partition?  I
am running Red Hat 6.2 in the Gnome X Windows environment.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
James

Unless you want to reinstall, there is no way to add this space
directly to your existing Linux partition.

However, you can make it a separate partition and mount it.  Put one
of the directories that take a lot of space into it, e.g. /var or
/home.  `du -ks' can help you decide which hierarchy to move to the
new partition.

Example: Let us assume this free space is organized as partition
/dev/hda3, and you decide to put your /var directory on it.  Then
you should do something like this:

1) Switch to single user mode or reboot your system in single user
   mode, to ensure no processes are writing to /var while you are
   copying it.

2) Create a file system on the new partition and mount it in a
   temporary place.  Warning: This will erase all data on that
   partition!

        # mke2fs /dev/hda3
        # mount /dev/hda3 /mnt

3) Copy the directory over to the new partition:

        # cd /var
        # tar cf - . | (cd /mnt && tar xpf -)

   This command is a bit complicated: It packs /var into a tar
   archive, which is not actually written to the disk but instead
   passed to another tar which unpacks it under /mnt.

4) Tell your system about the new partition:

        # echo "/dev/hda3 /var ext2 defaults 1 2" >>/etc/fstab

5) Reboot and make sure everything is running flawlessly.

6) Reboot to single user mode again and delete the old /var hierarchy.
   Create some directories that may be necessary if you should ever
   need to boot without the new /var partition.

        # umount /var
        # rm -rf /var/*
        # mkdir /var/lock /var/log /var/run /var/spool
        # ln -s /tmp /var/tmp