Hi, I am currently running Fedora 22. Since I first partitioned my disc and installed Linux on this system my /var folder (which is on the root partition) has been growing in size, to the point where it's next to impossible to do upgrades because the cache under /var is too small. I want to move /var to it's own separate partition. I currenntly have a partition containing the filesystem "/mnt/volume1" that I use for projects, storing files, videos, etc. It is quite a large partition and only about 10% full. I would like to shrink this partition by about 25% - 30% and use the free space to create a new partition which will contain /var .

From what I have read I believe I can use the "parted" or "gparted" utility to change the partition size. The question I have is once I shrink the partition will the reclaimed space show up as free space such that I can use parted (or fdisk) to make the new partition for /var ? If I can accomplish this successfully then I can copy the contents of /var to the new partition and format it (ext4) and then change fstab so that it will mount as /var boot time.

Any suggestions ? Would the parted utility and fdisk be the best utilities for this of is their a better solution these days ?