I just installed Fedore Core 4.

I accidentally made the swap partition 1024MB when it only needed to be 512MB (as I have 256MB RAM).

How do I start DiskDruid so I can reduce the swap partition and added it elsewhere? (I can't find it on the hard disk nor the install disk.)

Will this damage the present file system?

In general, can one alter partition sizes without damaging the file system (assuming the amount of files in any partition reduced in size are smaller than the new size)?

there's no reason to want to change the size of the swap. that rule about double the RAM is largely irrelevant and has been for a decade really... if you really do wish to reduce the size, just remove it from active use using the swapoff command, delete it and create a smaller on in it's place using fdisk or cfdisk. then use mkswap to format it as swap. you can then use resize2fs to expand an ext3 filesystem into the free space you've left behind. but do you really need than 512mb back? do you really have any idea how much swap you're going to use?

The swap = 2 times ram is not a good rule. In actual fact you are likely to need more swap since you only have 256meg ram. I always ran a gig of swap even with 256meg as I needed it at the time... The only way to know how much swap you need is to use the PC and it depends on what you run. I was using over a gig of swap back when I was compiling CS maps...

You can change partitions, but there is obviously some risk. You would need an app like qtparted (edit typo) or the like...

i use qtparted as well u can find it here http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/ its ever so good if you dont want to use fdisk and like.

i've never ever had any success with that program... it's *always* borked citing a too complicated partition table, which it never is...