Samba Shares only 2GB how do I make bigger

Its probably a good plan to set up a separate data partition and make it ntfs rather than ext3 and then share the whole partition. Then if you have to mess around with the Operating System then at least you know you don't have to worry about the data. Ubuntu only needs about 10Gb for its OS and programs, maybe give it a 15Gb partition if you're feeling over generous. Gparted is great at resizing and organising partitions but you'll probably have to install it first.

If you're using the desktop edition of Ubuntu ...
System menu on the top taskbar - Administration - Synaptic
use the search button to find gparted and tick it and apply.

From a command line tho, it's probably
apt-get install gparted

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Ok well thanks for the info tom I apprecitate it, however when I tried to run gparted from command line I got error GTK unable to dispaly message, any ideas on how to run gparted from command line/terminal??

Lol, i think i was thinking in Desktop Edition terms lol
The best thing to do when thinking of trying to run a gui in Server Edition is "forget it" lol

Sorry, parted (without the g at the front) is more powerful anyway. Gparted is just a gui that uses parted to do the work. From what i remember parted manages to be quite pretty even tho it's only run from the command line so try

sudo parted --help

to see the help file on how to use it and then

sudo parted

will open it. The command line changes because we are now in the package. Oh, we can also access the help file easily in here too. Type

print

to see a list of the current partitions. If you want help with the resizing and stuff then just paste the info in here and we'll try to make suggestions as to what we think might be better. I think lots of people are about to arrive here :)

Good luck with this
Regards from
Tom

Tom I will give this a go I really appreciate all your help you are a life saver :)

Ok well here is how I have the partitions setup I used the guided partion setup. I need to pull space off the boot partition and I am not quite sure how to do this with parted. I have read some things but have been unsuccessful so far, thanks again.

Number Start End Size Type File System Flags
1 32.3kb 41.1mb 41.1mb primary fat16
2 41.1mb 247gb 247gb primary ext3 boot
3 247gb 249gb 2361mb extended
5 247gb 249gb 2188mb logical ext3
6 249gb 249gb 173mb logical linux-swap

Blimey.

Does this machine have any other operating systems apart from Ubuntu? Dual-booting is a great idea, especially for a server that you don't want to have much down-time for. Usually dual-booting with Windows brings the most benefit but i can see more advantages of having a dual-boot of 2 linux's for a server.

Ok, i think i've worked out what we can do. This disc is looking a bit of a mess but we can happily add to that and then sort the mess later :)

1. Cute
2. Ubuntu
3. Contains 5 & 6
  5. Samba Shares?
  6. Cute

Ok, i think that in "parted" you need to type

resize 2 41.1mb 20521.1mb ext3

that should give Ubuntu 20Gb which should be plenty for future adventures and it still leaves a fair amount of space for clients. Does this look right to you too? Then you can do

mkpartfs primary ntfs 20521.1 247gb

Do you concur that it should make an ntfs primary partition that fills the space between the end of the resized Ubuntu and the beginning of the Extended Partition? I think it looks spot on.

Good luck with this
Regards from
Tom :)

Tom,

Thanks again for your help and you will have to excuse this windows user trying to make the move to linux. I have decided to start over on my server and I am currently trying to manually partition the drive in hopes I get it right this time :) Anyway I have been searching and searching and what i am really looking for is the best way to partition this thing. This server is simply going to act as a file server nothing more nothing less and from what I have read I was going to do the below. I would just like to find a best practice so I can use the proper mount points with the proper space allocated and I am getting confused a little with the /usr and /var etc, etc so here is what I was thinking hoping you can tell me if I am on the right track:

/boot = 200mb
/swap = 2gb (The server has 2gb of ram)
/ = 15 gb
/home = 200gb
/usr = 15gb (From what I have read this is where software is installed?)
/var = 15gb (Again from what I read email is stored here?)

Let me know what you think I am really starting to feel like an idiot!!

what do u understand under fileserver?
shall it only run samba, or would u like to have bittorrent, or a media streamer running on that?

if u ask me :

/ =2gb
/usr = 3gb
/var = 5gb

should be by far enough, if u are looking for a File server.

lol, i think you can run all this on the regular Ubuntu Desktop Edition. I don't think you need the Server edition? I could be completely wrong so just ignore that. Desktop Editin has a nice gui tho and that makes it easier to work oout what's going on.

As far as partitioning goes i think DieB has got it wrong although maybe it's to do with running Server Edition which i have never used. I think you were on the right lines with your own suggestion about the partitions but i would tweak it a bit and leave /boot /usr and /var all on the main /
So i reckon probably best would be

linux-swap Primary Partition = 4Gb (twice ram is usually best but 2Gb should do fine)
/ = 25Gb (you got the space but 15Gb should be fine instead) again a Primary
/home = 221Gb (or however much is left) again Primary Partition

It's handy to have data on a separate partition to the rest so that it doesn't get harmed when you do strange things to the OS. With the amount of Ram you have a linux-swap partition probably isn't necessary at all, in theory it should be twice the Ram though so a good compromise might be to have it at 2Gb as you suggested. Note this isn't part of the file-structure tho so its not /swap it's just linux-swap. The other Partitions can all be ext3 though. Having /boot /usr and /var on separate partitions is only an advantage when those partitions are separate disks, otherwise it's just forcing the discs read/write head to move frantically across the disc which is wear-and-tear that can be avoided - slightly less of an issue with /boot i think. Still the best thing is to keep it as simple as possible, remember KISS (= Keep It Simple Stupid).

Anyway, good luck with this
Regards and respect from
Tom :)

I agree with everything you have said. I was looking around some more and I think you are exactly right. Thanks again for all your help with this!

Thanks Brandon
Good luck with this
Regards from
Tom :)