First and Foremost…

I am not responsible over whatever shit that might occur during your migration process. What I am doing in this guide is documenting the process of the migration for my two previous partitions into one unified partition for the sake of seeking this guide when required.

Getting Started

/Have you ever gotten into a situation where you have to clean your /root partitions cache constantly because it keeps getting full? And by any chance, did you create a separate /home and /root partition which you now regret doing? If so then this guide is for you!/

Note Before proceeding with anything you need to know this: do not remove more than the /home partition after backing it up in another partition and it’s also advised that you back up both the partitions in another partition than /root!

WARNING Before we start off with the guide I need to clarify this that you should apply the commands based on your partition scheme and that this guide is written based on my partition scheme! So please, be cautious and follow this guide with the help of an experienced person if you do not understand what you should do!**

Current Partition Scheme

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[arch@archlinux ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0    7:0    0  87.9M  1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/core/5548
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part
├─sda2   8:2    0   100M  0 part
├─sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part
├─sda4   8:4    0 232.7G  0 part
├─sda5   8:5    0   550M  0 part /boot
├─sda6   8:6    0    12G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda7   8:7    0    20G  0 part /
└─sda8   8:8    0   200G  0 part /home
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

The surgery

IMPORTANT

• Make sure to remove cached files which you won’t be needing for this procedure to reduce the amount of time required to backup your files!

• Backup /home: will later be used to restore all the files after home partition (/dev/sdaX) has been removed and turned into anllocated space.

  • sudo tar czpvf /PATH/TO/BACKUP_PARTITION/home.tar.gz -C /home .

• Backup /root: if something wrong happens throughout the process, this backup would be used to ensure that the process is still replicatable.

  • Reboot into a LiveUSB to prevent file loss during the backup process.

Before Backup

• If you want to backup your files in your dual-boot OS (Windows): you need to install ntfs-3g which will allow you to mount the Windows partition without problems.

  • pacman -S ntfs-3g.

• mkdir /x; mount /dev/sdaX /x (Replace: /X/ = partition, x = folder-name).

• mount /dev/sdaX /mnt (/X/ = root-partition), do not mount /home otherwise it will backup alongside the /root backup of the partition.

• tar zcvpf /PATH/TO/BACKUP_PARTITION/root.tar.gz -C /mnt .

• When the backup has finished without returning errors => reboot and later check the files in the new archived folder to confirm that the files had indeed finished the backup process without trouble.

• Reboot to LiveUSB or just ignore this and finish the rest of this guide.

After Backup

1. Boot into your LiveUSB.

2. Confirm that you are either using GPT or MBR through gdisk /dev/sda.

3. Type p -> hit enter and you should be greeted with the current partition scheme.

4. Type d to remove partition and then X (replace /X/ with the number for your /home partition)

5. Repeat step 3, but replace X with the number for the root partition. a. If the process was successful, there should be no file loss from your root partition due to the creation of a merged partition rather than the deletion of the partition, which would transfer the files to the new partition instead of removing them.

6. During the writing of this guide, I had used two EXT4 partitions for both partitions, therefore you should note that the method is different for other partition types. (Hexcode number: 8300)

7. Type ~nto create a new partition and later choose the number for your partition with the block size set from thestart sectorto theend sector. a. Double check your start sectorand yourend sector`.

8. Type p to check the partition scheme and ensure that the new partition = /home + /root size and make sure to check the Hexcode number for the partition is the same as it previously was. (Hexcode number = 8300).

9. If you are satisfied with the new partition, type w to write the new partition.

10. Expand the filesystem using resize2fs: a. resize2fs /dev/sdaX, where X = number of the new created partition. b. If it returns e2fck -f /dev/sdaX``, then execute that command + the resize2fs` command afterwards.

11. Mount the newly expanded partition to /mnt: a. mount /dev/sdaX /mnt b. Do: ls /mnt to check if your old /root files are still present.

12. mkdir /x; mount /dev/sdaX /x and locate your saved /home.tar.gz file using cd.

13. tar -zxpvf /PATH/TO/home.tar.gz -C /mnt/home to unpack your files to /home directory.

14. Remove old /home partition from fstab from another window, CTRL+ALT+F3, through nano /mnt/etc/fstab + remove old lines for /home.

Lastly

1. To ensure that the process is working as expected do ls -l /mnt/home/. a. It should not be 0 because the old files in /home have transferred to the new /root partition!

2. Return to the window where you ran the tar command through CTRL+ALT+F3, when the process has finished run sync.

3. Check your files through ls and if you are satisfied…. reboot.

Good Job!

Now you have one unified partition rather than two :P