I want to install linux on sda2 but gparted will not allow me to make enough partitions for a /boot / and swap and I don't want to try to install without a swap partition. I have vista installed on sda3 and sda4 is full of data I don't want to delete as well.


here is what my partitions look like before attempting anything

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...da-GParted.png



next I create an ext3 or ext2 partition of around 30gb and then attempt to create a swap partition. here is what I get


http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...Screenshot.png



okay however when I try to delete the primary partition and create an extended partition gparted will only allow me to create a primary partition, not a logical or extended partition


http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...wPartition.png




anyone know what I should do?

You need to redefine your partitions so that the extended partition encompasses sda3, sda5 & sda6. They will be called sda5, sda6 & sda7 when you are done. You definately want to perform a backup first, in case you destroy the current partitions in the process. You may need to use fdisk to do it.

Before doing anything, get into the psuedo terminal and run "fdisk -l". Write down the start and end points of every partition. Looking at "fdisk -lu" might be a good idea as well. This will give the start and end points in sectors, which will probably be 256 byte blocks.

how do I redefine them?

the question also remains, why won't it let me make an extended partition when when I only had 3 other partitions, even if I delete sda1 leaving me with 2 partitions it still won't let me make an extended partition.

You could try changing the start of /dev/sda4 to the point where /dev/sda3 starts. See if you can change the type of /dev/sda3 to extended. If gparted is smart enough it will remove the /dev/sda3 (primary partiton) entry and create a /dev/sda5 in its place, and move /dev/sda5 -> /dev/sda6 and /dev/sda6 -> /dev/sda7.

If gparted won't do this, you can try using fdisk. I would recommend changing the units that gparted uses if possible because working with exact sector numbers may be more exact than using fractions of megabytes. You don't want any rounding errors.

If neither gparted or fdisk will change the start of the extended partition, then you may need to resort to deleting the partitions and redefining them. You will need to redefine the partitions with the exact starting and ending points, but you will define /dev/sda4 as an extended partition starting at the exact point that /dev/sda3 is now. This is why I recommended writing down the partition table.

You might want to read the Wikipedia article on the MBR to understand the partition table.