Re: [PLUG] Partition help needed

[Sean Finney <seanius@seanius.net>]

heya --

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 11:31:47AM -0400, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> Using Disk Druid, I successfully set it up to add a 39 mb /boot 
> partition (hde3), and a 15226 / partition (hde4).
> 
> Now, it won't let me add a /home or swap partion of any size.

that's because you can only have 4 slots for either primary or
extended partitions in a dos disklabel.  if you want more than 4
partitions, you have to change one of the 'primary' slots to be an
extended partition, which has the information for a number of extra
'logical' partitions.  (which are numbered starting at hda5)  

In your case, for some reason your second vfat partition wants its
own extended partition.  I don't understand why that's at all 
necessary, or if there's a simple way to modify an extended partition
to have it point to more logical partitions (I'd guess there is), but
maybe somebody knows something I don't :)

if you can't/don't want to modify your extended partition, I'd suggest
something like this:

hda1:	first vfat partition	
hda2:	extended
	-> hda5: second vfat
hda3:	/boot
hda4:	extended
	-> hda9: /
	-> hda10: swap
	-> hda11: /var
	-> hda12: /home
	
> I suspect the fact that the vfat partition is hde5 is the reason.
> 
> What can I do?

I don't know how important that data is in the second partition, and what
I'd do totally depends on that.  If you need the data, I'd say boot into
any working OS, copy the data elsewhere, delete the partition, and set
things up how you want them.  Also, it might be possible to just resize
your extended partition, so you could put other linux partitions in the
same extended partition frame as the second vfat.  I haven't ever had
to do this, but you said you had partition magic, which I would think
should be able to do something like that if it really is that magical :)
Otherwise, I'd just delete the hda5 partition and the extended entry in
hda2, and set it up however you wanted to in the first place.

> Is using just / & swap ok?

well "ok" in that it will work just fine, but you don't have the protection
of having your filesystems partitioned (if you have a program outputing
into a log file in /var or /home, and it goes amock, you lose everywhere)

hth
--sean

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