I only get to make two partitions
Hi how are ya! Yet another new Linux convert ... I've just loaded 3.4-3.rc3 on my HP Pavilion 763n with an 80GB HDD with its WinXP image on a 5GB HP Recovery partition and the actual load on the rest of the HD being the one large active partition. So I loaded Mepis and configured to dual-boot. I decreased the XP active partition down to 20GB, and wanted to create a root, home, and swap partition for Mepis out of the rest. Wouldn't let me make more than two partitions out of the free space left. After I created the root partition, the remaining space was more than enough to make a home & swap partition, but after I made the one, I right-clicked on the last bit of free space, but the &create was grayed out! So I ended up with a 48GB root and 1 GB swap partition. I've searched for a similar problem on this forum but couldn't find anything similar... Anyone? Thanks so much! 
AnnieO
Re: I only get to make two partitions
Hi how are ya! Yet another new Linux convert ... I've just loaded 3.4-3.rc3 on my HP Pavilion 763n with an 80GB HDD with its WinXP image on a 5GB HP Recovery partition and the actual load on the rest of the HD being the one large active partition. So I loaded Mepis and configured to dual-boot. I decreased the XP active partition down to 20GB, and wanted to create a root, home, and swap partition for Mepis out of the rest. Wouldn't let me make more than two partitions out of the free space left. After I created the root partition, the remaining space was more than enough to make a home & swap partition, but after I made the one, I right-clicked on the last bit of free space, but the &create was grayed out! So I ended up with a 48GB root and 1 GB swap partition. I've searched for a similar problem on this forum but couldn't find anything similar... Anyone? Thanks so much!AnnieO
-----------------------------------------
Hello & Welcome to Mepis, You have made a problem and the problem is you should have made the swap part first, you will need to delete the swap part to get things right and you will not be able to do this with the live cd because when you boot the live cd it will be using the swap part, ok. From what I understand you can delete it with the win xp disk manager, but I have not done that, I use a winme bootdisk that I can get at www.bootdisk.com and use fdisk. The way I would setup your HD is to first make a primary swap part 500MB then make an extended part, in the extended part make 4GB root and then use the rest for home. Home is where all your personal settings go, your e-mail and all of your downloads. Hope this helps.
I only get to make two partitions chapter 3
Hi Bad Dog,
thanks for replying! Right now I'm at work and can't get to bootdisk.com. I'll check out the WinXP disk manager utility also, just to see if I can do anything with that. So, I'll try this later when I get home!
Thanks,
AnnieO
I only get to ... fixing swap ... FIXED!
Hi ripcrd6, Bad Dog,
Thanks, that's a good idea (noswap option), I'll have to try it if I need it in future! But, I did get to fix it last night. I just went into WinXP's Disk Manager and deleted the "unknown" partitions (which of course were the Linux partitions). Then I booted with the live CD, was able to recreate the partitions (as you mentioned Bad Dog) with the last primary partition being the swap, and the extended partition containing /root and /home. Only thing is, when I did this initially, and clicked on Commit, I got an error in the window while it was working, saying "kdfs:ext3 has an error" and the home partition wouldn't be formatted. I just rebooted with the live CD, went back into QTParted and this time I was able to create the home partition and run Commit, then it worked.
Thanks very much!
AnnieO
Re: I only get to ... fixing swap ... FIXED!
Hi ripcrd6, Bad Dog,Thanks, that's a good idea (noswap option), I'll have to try it if I need it in future! But, I did get to fix it last night. I just went into WinXP's Disk Manager and deleted the "unknown" partitions (which of course were the Linux partitions). Then I booted with the live CD, was able to recreate the partitions (as you mentioned Bad Dog) with the last primary partition being the swap, and the extended partition containing /root and /home. Only thing is, when I did this initially, and clicked on Commit, I got an error in the window while it was working, saying "kdfs:ext3 has an error" and the home partition wouldn't be formatted. I just rebooted with the live CD, went back into QTParted and this time I was able to create the home partition and run Commit, then it worked.
Thanks very much!
AnnieO
-----------------------------------------
Happy I could help, have fun.
I only get to make two partitions...continued
Oh, forgot to mention:
/dev/hda1, fat32, 5.03 GB, (HP Recovery partition -- image)
/dev/hda2, ntfs, 20GB, WinXP ("Active partition")
/dev/hda3, ext3, 48.5 GB, root
/dev/hda4, linux-swap, 1GB, swap
When creating the Mepis partitions I didn't specify Extended. Should I have?
Update--I just read this: http://www.mepis.org/node/8896 which says I can only have four primary partitions on the HD. I will boot up with the live CD and attempt to create an extended partition as /home. Does that sound right? Sorry, unbelievably I'm a Solaris admin at work but hardly any Solaris work is involved...so a lot of times I'm winging it...Thank you!!!
AnnieO