I recommend that you create an image (I use 250MB, which is more than enough, 80MB is the bare minimum but you need space to install a few tools) with the Debian small distro on it. Create a profile that boots from this small image and also includes your production partition. Then you have the chance to boot this profile and do repairs and alterations to your production partition without the filesystem being mounted. You might need this now, and you will almost certainly need it sometime in the future.
To max out your production partition:
- Back up your production image (I rsync mine to my home machine).
- Log in to your Linode platform manager.
- Shut down your Linode.
- Go to the disk images tab.
- Click on each of the unwanted images and select 'delete image'.
- Click on your production image, enter a new size (the range of possible values is shown) and click 'save changes'. If your production image uses ext2 or ext3, both the image and the filesystem will be resized. If it uses another file system only the image will be resized. If this is the case, boot your Linode using the Debian maintenance profile and use the appropriate tool to resize the filesystem to fill the image. If you use reiserfs, you can just boot your Linode and resize it (bigger) on the fly.