>>Is it as simple as I am thinking it is?
>
>Probably not. Things are never as easy as you think they are,
>and when you get half way through it, you remember, after it's
>too late, that you shouldn't have done what you just did.
My assessment is that the risk, though measurable,
is low enough that, if it were me, I'd do it.
>>Can I just go into fdisk, delete the first 3 and
>>then create a bigger hda1?
>
>You can, but you had better make sure that the new hda1 ends
>precisely where the current hda3 does, or you could really
>mess things up.
That's true, but FDISK reportedly likes to align partitions
on cylinder boundaries, so this is probably not so risky.
>>I understand the hda* names will (may?) all change, and I
>>am prepared to fix this in /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab.
>
>Just so long as you're aware of that. Er, lilo.conf? Hmmm.
>Something tells me this could be bad. You're going to be
>changing the partition table of disk which is possibly going
>to be active? Not a good idea.
Well, here's where one of the annoying (and sometimes
downright scary) things about LILO, bless its pointed
little head, could actually come in handy. When you run
LILO (as you MUST every time you modify the bootable
on-disk kernel image) you are basically instructing
LILO to remember which PHYSICAL disk blocks are
occupied by the image in question, because the LILO
booter doesn't know about filesystems. Therefore,
assuming the bootable kernel is currently in (what is
currently known as) hda7 and no changes are made to that
partition, it's likely that you can get away without
running LILO. However, /etc/fstab and anything else
that refers to partitions by name (including lilo.conf)
will likely need to be changed to accomodate any changes
in partition naming now that two of them will have
gone away. By Karl's questions I take it that he's
aware of these issues...
>What I would do is make yourself a bootable floppy with
>fdisk on it.
Well, to be brutal about it, I don't see the point
of having fdisk on the floppy; if things are so
scrogged that you need fdisk you'll probably need a
lot more besides that'll never fit on a floppy! ;->
I agree that having a bootable floppy might be nice so
you have a place to stand while making tweaks in case
we've overlooked something. But this whole operation
should all pretty much Just Work(tm) while operating
from the hard disk. Be sure to remind LILO that it
should give you a chance to interact with it rather
than just unconditionally booting. That way, you
can specify kernel commandline options at boot-time,
if necessary.
Repeat as needed: Nothing Can Go Worng!
(sheesh! I'm glad this is his disk and not mine!
Is this what it feels like to be a stock broker? )
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