On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 11:57:40AM -0400, Jeff Malka wrote:
> > This may be a silly question, but why do you want to move it? "If it
> > works, don't fix it."
>
> As a "learning experience" (this is not yet my main pc)
Ah, ok. Good reason.
> and because I have had a few problems that could be related to it:
>
> 1) grub will not work on it. lilo does.
Haven't used Grub. LILO does everything I need it to do, so I have seen
no reason to change.
> 2) every so often, after I logout to the main graphic login screen (Mandrake
> 7.1) I lose the mouse which restores itself if I restart x.
I doubt very much that's a partitioning issue. You might try this next
time the rodent looses its marbles: hit ctl-alt-F9, which will move you
to a plain vanilla virtual terminal, un-initialized. Then hit ctl-alt-F7,
and you will be back in X. This forces X to re-iniitialize the rodent.
> 3) I was told originally not to do it this way
So? Most of human progress comes from people doing things they were told
not to do.
>
> > Meanwhile, it would probably help if you gave us a more detailed view of
> > the drive in question. As root:
> >
> > fdisk -l /dev/hdb
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Disk /dev/hdb: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 1090 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hdb1 * 2 721 5443200 5 Extended
> /dev/hdb2 833 951 899640 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb3 722 745 181440 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb4 746 832 657720 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb5 2 76 566968+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb6 77 146 529168+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb7 147 187 309928+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb8 188 201 105808+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb9 202 243 317488+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb10 244 354 839128+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hdb11 456 721 2010928+ 83 Linux
Wierd setup. You seem to have one extended partition in the first slot. I
would make the first slot a primary partition so that any version of fdisk
(including Mess-DOS' brain dead version) will see it, and so that anything
can boot to it and/or mount it if need be.
You also appear to have six logical partitions in your one extended
partition. I didn't know you could do that. Mess-DOS fdisk only allow you
to set up four logicals in an extended. I'm surprised Windows even sees
the other two! Although NT seems to be smarter about disk partitioning
than W95/98.
Then you have three primary partitions, not in cylinder order! Wild!
Also, you seem to be wasting cylinder 1. Unfortunately, the partitioning
scheme wastes most of cylinder 0 as well, but there's nothing to be done
about that.
>
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 767 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 * 2 129 516096 6 FAT16
> /dev/hda2 157 767 2463552 5 Extended
> /dev/hda3 130 156 108864 16 Hidden FAT16
> /dev/hda4 1 1 4000+ a OS/2 Boot Manager
> /dev/hda5 * 157 238 330592+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hda6 * 239 497 1044256+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hda7 * 498 701 822496+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/hda8 702 753 209632+ 82 Linux swap
>
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This one is a bit closer to what I would have expected. First a primary,
bootable partition. Then an extended partition, followed by three more
primary partitions. But the first partition in cylinder order is the last
entry in the partition table.
Wild! the OS/2 boot manager eats an entire cylinder.
And how did you get four different partitions labeled as the boot
partition?
OK, if you still want to muck with this, the first thing I would do is
back up everything, and make sure the backups are good.
Second thing is to make sure you can restore to bare metal if need be. See
my article in this month's Linux Journal on how to do that.
Get a copy of tomsrtbt because if you have to you can do some of the
re-arranging with its fdisk, and you will need it to edit your /etc/fstab
file. See the article in LJ for details.
Once you've done that, you can wipe the entire hard drive and start over
if you want.
Or you can create partitions, put file systems on them, copy contents
using cpio, dd or tar as needed. I would start by replacing the three
primary partitions with extended ones, and building logical partitions in
them to replace the primaries you lost. But this means that you almost
certainly will have to edit /etc/fstab so things will work correctly when
you get done.
You can't just create a new primary or extended partition, and go from
there. You can have only four partitions in the MBR, /dev/hdx[1-4]. So you
will have to delete at least one primary and use that slot to create an
extended partition. I'd delete hdb2, which is the last partition on the
disk, then create an extended partition which runs from cylinder 833 to
1090, then create logical partitions inside that.
Have I given you enough to get you started?
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Jeff Malka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Registered Linux user 183185
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Charles Curley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 11:00 AM
> Subject: Re: [expert] Moving partitions
>
>
> > On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 10:16:15AM -0400, Jeff Malka wrote:
> > > When I first installed linux, for reasons I no longer remember I
> installed
> > > Mandrake 7.1 as follows on my 8 GB second HD:
> > >
> > > I have a windows extended partition of 5.3 GB. Within and at the end of
> > > this extended partition (don't ask why) I have a 5.3 GB linuxExt2 main
> linux
> > > partition (hdb11). Beyond this extended partition I have my /usr, swap,
> > > /opt, /home partitions (hdb2, hdb3, hdb4).
> > >
> > > I own a full copy of Partition Magic which I used during the install. I
> > > would like to move the main linux partition "out" of the windows
> extended
> > > partition into free space beyond it.. If I moved it using Partition
> Magic,
> > > from within NT, will I still be able to boot into linux and will the
> > > partition move mess up things in linux?
>
--
-- C^2
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