repartitioning disks - what is possible

Qtparted should work just fine (I would never touch a Linux drive with PM, but that's just me).

Delete [G]
Delete [J]
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Move/Resize [H] to 4 GB
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
If [J] is unallocated drive space
Resize [I] to 12 GB
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Resize [K] to 12 GB
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Else
Delete [J]
Resize [I] to 12 GB
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Resize [K] to 12 GB
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Fi
Make [L] ext3 or Reiser. Don't use ext2.
Committ changes
Restart qtparted
Rescan device
Confirm partition arrangement.


I'm gonna go to heaven, but I might be late...'cause I'm gonna live forever if the good die young.

I started to try as you suggested. I have stopped before
too much more damage is done. This message is from the
dreaded WindowsXP.

This is what happened. . .
1) I tried to delete [G] (was sda6) - OK
2) I tried to delete [J] (was sda8) - NOK - in fact no
partitions offer any options other than "properties"
now. So I decide to "commit" and continue.
3) restart qtparted & rescan. OK. No partition offers
any options other than "properties" *still*. I was
hoping to delete [J].
4) So figure that I'll try a reboot. Bad move.
5) Grub flashes some error message, but a core-duo 3.4
makes it too fast to read. Now I've got a grub menu.
I don't know how to drive this. I try, but nothing
actually does anything from my trials.
6) Reboot from Live CD (3.4 my 6.0 is on loan).
7) Re-install grub from Mepis OS-centre
Reboot, hangs during splashy startup, F2 reveals:
"fsck.ext2: no such file or directory while trying to
open /dev/sda10 (superblock could not be read or does
not contain a correct ext2 filesystem)
CONTROL-D will exit from this shell and continue with
system startup."
**NO IT WON'T**.
9) Reboot from Live CD again.
10) Qtparted now reveals [G] is free/hidden and is now
sda-1, whilst [H-L} have moved done one sda number
i.e. [L] was sda10, is now sda9.
11) So I've reboot WindowsXP to send this.

Obviously there must a whole bunch of steps wrong or
missing, since this started to go wrong at step *1*.

cheers

Hello to EnigmaOne,
Qtparted does not behave as you describe. I have booted from
live disk, removed all spurious mounts from /etc/fstab on the
root filesystem, and rebooted to Mepis 6.0.

So to continue where I left off. . .

The fat32 [G] drive is "free".
I try to use qtparted (as you said "move/resize") - well it can't be done! "move" does not option "& resize". And "resize" says OK, but will not allow a "commit". (I'm guessing here, but "swap" is "in use" even though it is idle).

Second: what was [J] (now [I]) cannot be deleted. I'm
told "it is mounted". Oh no it ain't: see
/home/beckwith $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 8064524 4384596 3270276 58% /
varrun 1685888 144 1685744 1% /var/run
varlock 1685888 0 1685888 0% /var/lock
udev 1685888 180 1685708 1% /dev
devshm 1685888 0 1685888 0% /dev/shm
lrm 1685888 18240 1667648 2% /lib/modules/2.6.15-27-686/volatile
/home/beckwith $

what more details do you need?
cheers

You may want to try this (older versus current) version of the GParted Live CD and see how it works for you. It won't mount the swap drive and you'll have more resources available for partitioning.

GParted 0.3.1-1 Live CD Download Links

Jim C.

bootitng works well

http://www.www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

At the first screen click cancel so that it won't be installed to your hard drive -- run bootitng from CD or floppy
Otherwise it's pretty much self-explanatory

Mike

I've had problems with qtparted in 6.0 many times I had to reboot after each change to get the option, I didn't have any problems with gparted (although some people on forums did have problems) in 6.5.

Try 6.5.

--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Sorry for being absent for a bit...home life has forced that on me, and I'll try to get in here every so often until my schedule shakes free on the 22nd.

I'm gonna pitch-in with Jim on this one...give gparted a try. I know that there are situations that befuddle both qtparted and gparted and, hopefully, between the two, most occasions should be covered.

I'm gonna go to heaven, but I might be late...'cause I'm gonna live forever if the good die young.

Hello,
I may not get time tonight, but my next try will be to use
qtparted from the live disk. I should have thought of this
before, that way I can't possibly have any "in use" disks.
If that fails I will get gparted and give it a go.
cheers

Hello
My SM6.5 DVD arrived today. It has gparted on it, so I went straight to it. It appears that all I desired is done, but
gparted says it had an error with the 4th of it's tasks. But the disk map looks OK. I saved the log file to my thumb drive and will examine it tomorrow.
I note that gparted says my root partition is sda6 but df says sda7, so I'll really know until I rebuild the fstab file

But otherwise 6.5 looks very good, though a couple of glitches occurred with my Nvidia video card (I chose to use the Nvidia drivers). But this was a rush job, I must flee
to the cooking of dinner - my job tonight.

I'll update tomorrow or Saturday as to what is what.

cheers & thanks to all.

If a SimplyMEPIS Live CD sees a swap partition, it will use it. You can verify that by typing this from a console:

swapon -s

Now, I think you can disable it by using this as root. I haven't tried it but this is the syntax I found for the command.

su
swapoff -a

From my perspective, it's easier to use the lighter footprint GParted Live CD. The version I mentioned in my last post has given me less problems compared to newer versions. For that matter, even the GParted included in SimiplyMEPIS 6.5 seems to have conflicts with my PC)

That may not be a problem with your PC. But, since the GParted live CD download is relatively small (approx. 25MB), and it's a "light footprint" Live CD (not much being loaded in the way of services, etc.), you'd have more RAM/CPU resources available for partitioning, without the headaches associated with trying to disable swap partitions (the GParted Live CD doesn't try to use any swap partitions on the drive).

I used it not too long ago to rearrange the partitions on my PC, including resizing the swap partition.

Personally, I think you're probably going to be allocating more than needed to swap, though. I made my swap partition smaller (not larger) not long ago using the GParted Live CD (I reduced it from 2GB to approx. 1GB on a PC with 1GB of RAM). From what I've seen so far, it hardly ever touches swap, so I probably don't need the 1GB I have allocated now.

If the GParted or QTParted on the SimplyMEPIS Live CD works for you, great. I just want to give you an alternative that may or may not get around the "quirks" you're seeing. Personally, I use the GParted Live CD version 0.3.1-1 for my partitioning needs versus another solution, because it works fine on hardware I've tried it on so far. Of course, depending on your hardware, YMMV

Jim C.

The final step was to increase the size of the fat32
partition (was [K] originally sda9). This reported
success. The "dosfsck" then reported: unable to open
/dev/sda7 - no such file or directory. Probably no
drama - an empty fat32 disk - so what!
cheers & thanks to all.

OK, before I put back my "real" fstab, this confuses me.
Both qtparted & gparted show that I have:
sda1 nfs (winXP)
sda2 extended
sda5 linux swap
sda6 ext3 (/)
sda7 fat32
sda8 ext2 (/user 262GB)

But /etc/fstab shows:
sda5 vfat,ext2,ext3,reiserfs
sda6 swap
sda7 ext3 (/)
sda8 ext2 [when mounted is 262GB aka /user)

Does the "auto rebuild" of fstab move MS disks
upwards?

Final question. EnigmaOne suggested "make sda8
into ext3 or reiserfs" - after looking around I'm
assuming that means backup, reformat, restore -
although I've lots of stuff about how the linux
family of file systems can be changed w/o losing
data.
cheers

sda1 I would hope is actually ntfs.

I haven't done anything that might be called "auto rebuild"ing of an /etc/fstab file, so I really can't comment on that particular process or its outcome, as you seem to be showing. I can say that directly implementing information garnered through qtparted has given me correctly-functioning /etc/fstab files in every instance.

Are you dealing with static or dynamic /etc/fstab entries, above?

As to the part type: Yeah, I would really avoid the use of an un-journaled filesystem, at all costs.

The ext2 can be converted to an ext3 filesystem by journal addition; but it's been so many years since I've done that, that I can't trust myself to try to recall what was done so long ago.

If it was my machine, I'd drop another drive in it and

cp -ax *

(in single user mode) to the new drive, change the partition type, format, and

cp -ax *

(in single user mode) everything back where it was.

"...Del mundo te vas adueñar, la música y la poesía, tus penas las podrás curar."

Hello,
what I'm saying is that gparted & qtparted say this
sda1 ntfs
sda2 extended
sda5 linux swap
sda6 ext3
sda7 fat32
sda8 ext2

but fstab (get altered every reboot, and duplicates fd0) has
sda1 ntfs - agree
sda5 vfat - ???
sda6 swap - ???
sda7 ext3 - this is what grub says it is booting from
sda8 ext2 - agree

so the "sda" numbers in fstab do not reflect the order
of the partitions on the disk.

Currently my fstab has only root (sda7) as static, and
the others as dynamic. When last I made sdf1 (external
usb 500GB drive) auto mount, the next reboot removed
the "dynamic" comment ((and as a side effect stopped
duplicating fd0 on every reboot - a known problem)).

Anyway, I was just curious if there was a way to convert
an ext2 to ext3, but I will back it up to the 500GB drive
and reformat it.

OK, whatever /etc/fstab shows, it not quite real - see

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/sda7 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/sda8 /user ext3 defaults 1 0
/dev/sdf1 /big ext3 defaults 1 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /win ntfs defaults,ro 1 0
/dev/sda7 /fat vfat defaults 1 0
# Dynamic entries below, identified by 'users' option
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom iso9660,udf noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy vfat,ext2 noauto,users,exec,rw 0 0
~
The mysterious "/dev/sda5" does not exist according to
both Gparted and QtParted. *BUT* I can mount it. It appears to be a 2GB partition - see below

/ # df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 12097852 4404796 7201472 38% /
varrun 1685888 144 1685744 1% /var/run
varlock 1685888 0 1685888 0% /var/lock
udev 1685888 176 1685712 1% /dev
devshm 1685888 0 1685888 0% /dev/shm
lrm 1685888 18240 1667648 2% /lib/modules/2.6.15-27-686/volatile
/dev/sda8 271270192 18831204 238659236 8% /user
/dev/sdf1 480719056 18831636 437468220 5% /big
/dev/sda1 8193116 6101764 2091352 75% /win
/dev/sda7 12277680 15584 12262096 1% /fat
/dev/sda5 2096160 12960 2083200 1% /mnt/sda5
/ #

At least the duplication of "fd0" appears to have stopped.
But *WHY* is *Parted differing from /etc/fstab.

I'm feeling really hestitant to upgrade to 6.5 if I cannot
understand what 6.0 is doing with my disks.