How can I change the partitions' numbers ??

haertig · 04-17-2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Another thing, I don't agree with you that partition designators almost match hardware reality. They will only match it if you create the partitions in sequence from the first cluster to the following one. If you create a partition at the beginning of your hard disk, then one at the end and then one in the middle of it, they aren't goint to be correctly labeled or saying it differently they aren't goint to be sequencely labeled (1,2,3...)

I'm not sure exactly what you said above. So I may be reinforcing you, or contradicting you with the stuff below.

I originally had some primary FAT32 and NTFS partitions at the beginning of my disk, and an extended partition containing Linux logical partitions at the end of my disk. The MIDDLE of the disk was unpartitioned.

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1          34      273073+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2              35         799     6144862+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3           22940       24321   177116625    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5           22940       24214    10241406   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/hda6           24215       24278      514048+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7           24279       24317      313236   83  Linux
/dev/hda8   *       24318       24321       32098+  83  Linux

Later, I added a new 160Gb LVM logical partition. See below. My partition designations DID change. For example, above you'll see my boot partition (the last one on the disk) was /dev/hda8. But below you'll see it was moved to /dev/hda9 when I squeezed that new LVM partition into the middle of the disk. So in my experience, partition designations WILL change to reflect the new physical sequence on the disk. This is why I said you'd need to modify fstab, menu.lst, and initrd previously. I know that I had to do this after making my changes! I made the fstab and grub changes right off the bat, before trying to boot, because I knew that would be required. I didn't realize I'd also need to recreate initrd until after I tried to boot, and failed.

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1          34      273073+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2              35         799     6144862+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3            2272       24321   177116625    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            2272       22939   166015678+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/hda6           22940       24214    10241406   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/hda7           24215       24278      514048+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda8           24279       24317      313236   83  Linux
/dev/hda9   *       24318       24321       32098+  83  Linux

You'll note that I still have a little unpartitioned space in the middle of my disk - 10Gb or so. If I partition this as a logical I will need to redo fstab, grub, and initrd again. However, if I partition it primary, I don't think I'll need to do anything special to get Linux to boot. Because a new primary should take /dev/hda3 and bump the extended to hda4, or it will leave the extended at hda3 and take hda4 for itself. I'm not exactly sure which scenerio will unfold. In either case, hda5 and up should remain unchanged. That's my theory anyway. We'll see what actually happens once I partition this space!