Increase partition

Ive recently upgraded my virtual machine which is running Lenny and ispconfig. The size of the hard disk has been increased from 10 to 20gb.

Im trying to increase the size of sda2 ext3 bootable partition whils it is still mounted using cfdisk.

I understand I should use cfdisk to delete the current partition and create a new one of an increased size.

So I start this..

Cfdisk /sda

I highlight partition sda2

Delete partition

Write to disk yes

Create new parition,

But if I try to create a partition any larger than the original nothing seems to happen.?

Kernel 2.6.26-2 amD64






I wouldn't normally use this part of the forum for this question, but my second question is, would it be preferable to just create sda3 and then copy /var to the new partition but mount it it from the original position ?

 

Ok thanks ... But I think I have two problems with that method

1; my server is a vim in a data centre so I can't boot off another distro and I'm pretty sure they don't have a rescue service distro to boot off, but I will ask - so I'd have to extend the parition whilst still mounted which I understand is ok on my kernel version.

2; I think I'm going to run into the same problem as when using cfdisk. I think I realise now that I couldn't create a larger partition than before is because the spare space is not directly after the file system partition. There is a swap paritition right after it,.. Like this

Linux .com 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP Wed Sep 21 03:36:44 UTC 2011 x86_64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux....

:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21485322240 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2612 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00007eb9

* *Device Boot * * *Start * * * * End * * *Blocks * Id *System
/dev/sda1 * * * * * *1245 * * * *1306 * * *498015 * 82 *Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * * * * * * * 1 * * * *1244 * * 9992398+ *83 *Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Is that a fair assumption?