Resolution for Inspiron Mini/Ubuntu Linux Partitioning Issue

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Following up from my blog post from last week, we now have a simple and robust resolution for the drive partitioning issue on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux. Since some systems with 8GB or 16GB solid state drives (SSD's) only have 4 GB of space formatted, we needed a simple method to extend the existing root partition and filesystem to fill the entire disk. The solution we decided upon is to add the fix to one of the operating system packages, and push this package out to customers via the software update process, so that the resolution is relatively transparent.

For customers that regularly update their system software, this problem will be automatically resolved the next time an update is performed. For those that don't regularly update their system software, perform the following steps:

  1. From the Ubuntu main menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System -> Administration -> Update Manager
  2. Once the Update Manager window loads, click on "Check", and enter your password when prompted
  3. Click on Install Updates to update your system software
  4. Once all of the updates are installed, restart your system when prompted.

During your system restart, the system partition will be resized, after which your operating system will have access to the entire drive. To verify that you this process is successful, from the Ubuntu main menu, select System -> Administration -> System Monitor, and then select the "File Systems" tab. Look for a line that starts with "/dev/sda2"; for a system with an 8GB drive, the "Total" column should list something above "6 GiB", while for a 16GB drive, this should list something above "14 GiB".

For those interested in the specific details, the fix for this has been added to the ume-config-belmont package, version 0.77.3 and later, and posted to the Ubuntu Mini apt repository.

Update: If you have already partitioned the remaining space manually, this update will not make any changes to your partitioning, and will have no effect.

About the Author: John Hull

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