There are a couple tools that have been developed to help users create and manage Colinux disk images.
TopoResize[]
This program will create new images or enlarge/shrink existing images using the ext2 or ext3 filesystem. It's still pretty new (and may have bugs), so use at your own risk. (There is in fact a bug where it won't work when your image filename has a space in it.) However, if you're squeezed for disk space, this program can be a real lifesaver! =) It uses a GUI so it is "newbie friendly" in terms of ease of use. The options are pretty straightforward.
TopoResize is also a good source for getting cygwin ports of e2fsprogs. It is just a tcl/tk front end for them so advanced users can use them at the command line.
Also, see the NiceTools page for the Colinux file utilities, which are a set of command line tools that help with creating and managing disk images. In addition to letting you create and resize partitions, the Colinux file utils let you create "sparse" disk images.
Download[]
Toporesize can be found at:
- http://usuarios.lycos.es/aquiestachilo/toporesize
- http://www.henrynestler.com/colinux/tools/toporesize-0.7.1.zip
- http://usuarios.lycos.es/aquiestachilo/toporesize/toporesize.zip (v0.7)
<Kev>
I used topresize to make my original 1GB Debian bigger and despite setting a large size, the file ended up as 2GB. Using topresize again resulted in a filestore that wouldn't mount, so I used toprestore to create a new file with an empty file system and mounted it at a new point. This bugged me so I decided to find a better way, and I will have added it to How to expand the size of the root partition .