How to merge /usr and /var partitions into slash root?

Question

Seem to have missed the bit about NOT creating a separate /usr partition while setting up Fedora 18 last month.

Everything works fine (or at least appears to), but looking at my partitioning scheme there's a lot of wasted space:

/dev/sda1 /boot 181MB of 400MB
/dev/sda2 /     606MB of 20GB
/dev/sda3 /usr  6.0GB of 15GB
/dev/sda5 /var  1.5GB of 15GB*
/dev/sda6 /home 15GB  of 185GB*

sda5 (/var) and sda6 (/home) are on extended partition /dev/sda4

This might be a better partitioning scheme:

/dev/sda1 /boot 181MB of 400MB
/dev/sda2 /     8.0GB of 20GB (after transferring /usr & /var data)
/dev/sda3 /home 15GB  of 60GB
free space 160GB

Need to backup above primary SSD to 2ndary 256GB SSD (and then to external 500GB HDD); current partitioning scheme looks suboptimal, so much wasted space.

Here's the 2ndary drive:

/dev/sdb1 ntfs boot 35MB of 100MB
/dev/sdb2 ntfs system (Windows 7) 11GB of 20GB
/dev/sdb3 ext4 /vm-storage 25GB of 80GB
/dev/sdb4 extended (primary SSD data should be replicated here)

So, the question is, is it possible to gparted clone existing /usr and /var partitions into / root on primary drive? If so, I assume I then remove /usr and /var mount points from /etc/fstab and Fedora will be fine with / root mount point and the /usr and /var directories that it contains post-gparted cloning?

I can put gparted on Fedora 18 LiveCD (unless it's already there) and boot off of that to get at the unmounted disks to do the surgery -- just want to make sure this is a possible/wise operation.

Thanks

Answer 1

Just boot any Linux LiveCD, copy partition contents to appropriate directories and edit fstab, everything should be fine. But if I were you, I'd keep /home on separate partition - if you ever want to reinstall OS it could be left untouched. Also you can share it across multiple distros.