"James K. Lowden" <jklowden@schemamania.org> writes:
> One difference between newbies and gurus: gurus distrust magic. 
> Filesystems aren't *meant* to grow and shrink, and programs that grow and
> shrink them almost certainly -- not that I understand them in any detail
> -- take some shortcuts with your data.

Jim, this is nonsense. I'm sorry to say that, but you're steering
someone wrong.

There are perfectly reasonable programs to do stuff to resize
partitions, and indeed, there are many file systems used in production
in the real world that can be arbitrarily grown.

> If the "UFS shrinker" crashes in
> mid-shrink, what state do you suppose it will leave the filesystem in? 

If it is done right and it is logging what it does, it can restart. If
it is done wrong, well, then you need to back up your data before
resizing, but sometimes that's still a big win.

Anyway, this blanket "gurus don't do X" claim is just plain wrong.

Perry