On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 10:41:57PM +0100, Miroslav Skoric wrote: > As I need to extend & resize more than one LV in the file system (/, /usr, > and /var), should they all need to be unmounted before the operation? As I > remember, it is ext3 system on that comp.
Whaaaaat?? I don't think these words mean what you think they mean. An LV is a logical volume, which is like a virtual partition. It's a block device, like /dev/sda2. You can use an LV the same way you would use a partition -- you can use it for swap space, or a file system, or other purposes. A file system is a mountable directory structure that you can put inside a partition, or an LV. File system types include ext4, ext3, xfs, vfat, and so on. If your system has separately mounted file systems for /, /usr and /var and you want to shrink ALL of them, then yes, you would need to unmount all three of them, shrink them, then (re)boot. You can't unmount / during normal operations, so the only ways to shrink / would involved booting in a special way, either with some external medium, or with specific kernel parameters. Thus, you'd typically reboot to get back to normal operations afterward. However, if you're in a position where you think you need to make dramatic changes to FOUR of your mounted file systems, perhaps you might want to consider restarting from scratch. Ponder why you have separate file systems at all. Are they really giving you a benefit? Have you ever filled up one of them and thought "Oh wow, I am *so* glad I separated these file systems so I didn't fill up ___ as well!" Or are they just giving you grief with no benefits?
