How to enlarge a partition in Linux?

Question

linux

The VMWare virtual machine is running Debian. Increased disk size from 20GB to 50GB.

~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              19G   11G  7.2G  60% /
tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                  501M  160K  501M   1% /dev
tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm

~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00045252

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2499    20067328   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            2499        2611      901121    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            2499        2611      901120   82  Linux swap / Solaris

I downloaded LiveCD Gparted, booted from it, but the partition / dev / sda1 does not allow to increase, only to reduce.
Tell me if it is possible, after saving the data, to change the size of the dev / sda1 partition to an unallocated area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe disk. Or there is only an option to do it through LVM, as in the article tarhome.com/archives/259 for example.

Answer 1

If there are no more partitions on /dev/sda , then I recommend deleting /dev/sda2 & /dev/sda5 and no longer creating "Extended\Extended" partitions. After removal, resize /dev/sda1 and create swap .

Answer 2

you can use Aufs, add another disk and merge