I have a laptop configured as a dual boot with XP and Knoppix/Debian. Using a QParted - Live CD I did the following.

Left a 40 ms System restore partition.
Squeezed the XP NTFS Partition down to 16 GB.
Created a 16 GB ext3 Partition for my Knoppix Install.
Created a 1 GB swap File Partition.

I discovered that the swap partition was too far back. I have tried several times to move it ahead of the ext3 partition. QParted will allow me delete the swap file and it will let me resize the ext3 partition. Then I only have space following the ext3 partition. I have been unable to create any space ahead of the ext3 partition which I could use for a swap partition. Qparted will not let me enter an number in the space ahead config blank

Any ideas or suggestions?

John_2

Delete both the swap and ext3 partitions. Make the swap partition first, then make the ext3 and re-install Knoppix. If you have spend much time acquiring personal files and setting app preferences in Knoppix, make a backup of your /home/user directory before messing with the partitions. Then restore /home/user after re-installing Knoppix.

Thanks. I suspected that was the only solution. My personal settings are not large but the updates that have poured into the laptop are. Who said learning has no cost?

John_2

What does this mean ???.
There are no limits (restrictions) in terms of swapspace placement I'm aware of.

I am new at this. The dual boot is an experiment with a laptop that was available and there is little if any work on the laptop. I run a Samba server with debian stable and wanted to see what desktop linux was like and installing knoppix on the hard drive seemed a reasonable solution and kept me in debian.

I seemed to be getting some swap errors and have seen some directions to place the swap partion ahead of the normal ext partition. I wanted to move the partition to see if that cleared up those errors. This may be moot as the move failed with errors and I have Gibson's Spinrite program running to see how bad the errors are.

John_2