[parted-devel] shrink partition and ext3 file-system on it from the beginning using parted

[Martin T]

Hello,

hopefully this isn't off-topic mail in this mailing-list. I would like
to shrink a partition and ext3 file system on this partition starting
from the beginning. In other words beginning of the file system and
partition should change, but the end remains the same. I need to do
this on a headless machine over SSH, but partition I'm operating with
is unmounted.

As I understand, latest(3.1) parted does not support operations with
file systems(move, mkpartfs, resize and other similar commands are
missing and documentation confirms this). So I installed parted 2.4.
However, looks like this doesn't support ext[234] extended attributes
like ext_attr or resize_inode. Should I remove those features before
operating with parted? In addition, does parted support shrinking
partition and file system starting from the beginning? I know Gparted
can do this(uses some sort of internal algorithm for "sliding" the
file system), but I'm operating remotely on a headless system. Or is
the dd(1) only option in this case? :)


regards,
martin