How to resize /root partition size without formatting?

It is not possible to resize the partition when you have booted in same OS. It is possible to resize partition with a Live CD. Either use Ubuntu live CD or gparted live CD. You will have to boot from live CD, decrease the size of some other partition on your hard disk and then increase of / partition. At no point of time you should format the partition or change the partitioning structure.

Regards

Yes the all-new guide at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
particularly figure 3 might help the / partition needs about 4Gb at the very least. 5Gb is plenty tho.

Oops. A typo

Yes the all-new guide at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
particularly figure 3 might help.

The / partition needs about 4Gb at the very least. 5Gb is plenty tho.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

and my login window manager fails frequently, after its updation from 9.04 to 9.10 alpha-4.. Thanks for the previous.. But Mr. Tom, can i use Gparted while logged into ubuntu?

No, you will have to use a live CD, because the partition is mounted, when you are logged in, and can therefore not be resized.

9.10 is an alpha release which means you can expect things to go wrong with it quite a lot. When something does go wrong please post it as a bug-report to help the alpha release get ready for beta-testing.

If the gdm login screen is causing problems it might be worth installing and trying "slim" or something instead.

Good luck with this and regards from
Tom :)

Please be sure your Ubuntu Karmic devel release is fully updated and upgraded... please tell can you open or get a terminal and network access... ?

Yup. I can open terminal and access network throug BSNL(KERALA) WLL dialup connection. Now i resized my partition. But crashing problem still exists.. And i understand the problems in alpha release. And am reporting it too. One more quest. Where is the installed files kept in ubuntu? I mean, in WinXP, we can specify the folder to which the prog must be installed. But in linux i see, i cant. But i too donno wher the s/w is kept. And please say me a website where i can study the technical parts of ubuntu. Coz i am studying Computer Science and want to know more about ubuntu in its technical level. Thanks.

YASH;

are you getting any error messages? like a partman crash?

No, some progrms like login window manager, nautilus etc crashes sometime..

Hmm post a screenshot link here please

file:///home/ansy/Desktop/Screenshot.png
Of My desktop? Please say me how?

Ideally one would have a stable linux system installed as a dual-boot alongside Windows and then an additional space(s) for testing out alpha release or trying different distros such as
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
(currently has 2 versions being beta-tested). This would mean you could use and lookup stuff in your stable release in order to try to work out how to fix things in your testing install. Note that many of us have a multi-boot system for exactly this type of reason. Having 3 or 4 OSs with 1 or 2 being alpha releases is a much more normal way of doing this.

The screenshot link you gave us is stored on your machine and is not available over the internet. The clue is that the links address starts with "file://" rather than "ftp://" or "http://"

I would really recommend installing 9.04 as an additional part of a multi-boot system, just to get the stability and easy access to something that just works. 9.10 is really not ready for users like you and me just yet as it needs something like developers skills/knowledge and a lot of linux experience to use an alpha test release.

I am not saying that you wont be able to alpha test things soon but at the moment i would restrict that to alpha testing smaller programs rather than the whole operating system. Give yourself a couple of weeks to get a bit more used to linux and where things are - then you will be ready to alpha test linux OSs.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Please say me where is the installed softwares kept in ubuntu?

When you resize a partition all the installed software is kept...

Ahamed with a slow dialup connection i suggest you to NOT install a very frequently update develop release as Ubuntu 91.0 Karmic Koala...

Please install a stable release... i suggest you the Ubuntu 9.04

Or try to update your Karmic develop release by typing (it will take a lot of time with a slow connection):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get --fix-missing install
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

and to clean and to get space

sudo apt-get clean

Hope this helps

No.. Ok.. I juz need to know wether if i format the current ubuntu 9.04(already updated to 9.10 alpha-4)and install fresh ubuntu 9.04, my installed softwares will be lost or not? I use separate /home and /root partition. Say me where are the installed softs saved-is it in /root or in /home partiton? So that i can make up my disk to that level. Thanks.
The Yash!

Yes you will loose almost all your installed software because it is installed not into the /home or /root partititon...

Hope this helps

Oops.. Then where is all get installed?

The installed software is installed in different directory under the / directory... and not only in one place...

Mostly of them are...

bin
boot
dev
etc
lib
opt
proc
sbin
selinux
srv
sys
tmp
tmpfs
usr
var

Hmm. So the the thing is the softwares are splitted up to different criterias according to their characteristics right? hm ok. Better i will delete my ubuntu and bring up a fresh install coz every thing like login screen, pidgin, and all and everything sucks. And also is there any problem if i update my grub to version 2? How is it done? Any problem on doing this? Is the version 2 is unstable?

Thanks for all your answers. Thank You.

Thanks marcobra (Marco Braida), that solved my question.

Brilliant, nicely done. :))
I'm glad you have got that sorted out so quickly.

For adding another OS to a dual boot you'll really need to set-up a new partition for it. I would recommend keeping the /home partition that karmic uses separate from the /home for the stable release. Since the stable one is not your main focus then you might aswell just keep it in the same partition as the rest of the install. This guide might help you install a stable release alongside your testing versions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

Welcome to linux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner of it :))
Congrats, good luck and regards from
Tom :)