hello everybody,
I am having win2k and linux (Debian) running.
Now I want to resize the win2k partition (make it smaller)
and allocate the free space resulting from that to the linux
partition (make it larger).
My HD is 20 GB. win2k is 16 GB and linux is 3GB and linux
swap is 512 MB. I am planning to use the partition magic to
get that job done.
My question here is that Is resizing the Linux partition going
to damage its file system or not? if not do u have any advices
regarding the resizing process?

thanx in advance.

i resized my 120 gig hard drive home to win xp to make room for mandrake and fedora resulting in corrupted xp files and xp re installation i used acronis 8.0 my advice would to back everything up

One thing you might try that I found benifical when reconfiguring with Partition magic was to move my swap file to the front of the hard drive... you get faster swap perfromance. I would only try this however after everthing is backed up... you could run the risk of screwing up your boot sectors...

I bought Partition Magic last week. You should be able to do that if the Windows partition has the empty space to spare. If PM doesn't like that, then create a new Ext2 or Ext3 format partition and tell it to steal space from the Windows partition. Here is what I did

-ntfs xp
-ext3 /boot
-ext3 / root
-extended
'-data ext3
'-data2 fat32
'-swap

You should only have 4 primary partitions. The Extended gets divided into Logical partitions and they dont count so you can have a bunch. hth

http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/download.en.html - QTParted supports ntfs create/resize.

OneManArmy: To answer your first question, PartitionMagic 8 will not damage your linux partition. There is also a linux utility called parted that I have never used, but is supposed to function similar to PM. If you use PM, here are some suggestions:

1. Before starting, purge the trash can and defragment the Win2K partition. If you have a disk packing utility (e.g., Norton Speed Disk), then pack the disk using it. Defragmentation maximizes the amount of contiguous free space that PM has to work with during the resizing.

2. Check the Win2K partition for errors. PM will not modify a filesystem if it detects errors in it.

3. Run PM by booting from the PM installation disk, not from windows. When windows-based PM needs to modify a windows-type partition, it boots into a form of dos to do the work. Sometimes, it fails to complete and will leave all of the partitions “hidden”, until you rerun PM from the CD (or floppies) and reset one partition as “active”. This problem doesn't happen if you run PM by booting from the PM installation/recovery disk. There are no problems modifying ext3 partitions from windows.

4. Only ask PM to “apply” one task at a time. Sometimes, it will run into problems “applying” a series of partition moves and resizes. It doesn’t do any damage, but it can waste your time.

5. If you change the order of the partitions or create logical partitions, linux may not boot, because the boot loader may be pointing to the wrong partition. If you are using GRUB, this can be fixed by using a GRUB command line boot disk. Also, remember that GRUB counts drives and partitions by starting at zero (i.e., grub (hd0,0) = first partition on the first drive).

6. If you move the swap partition, be sure to modify the /etc/fstab entry for the swap partition to point to the correct partition number.

7. Making the swap and all linux partitions into logical partitions is a great idea, but keep items #5 and #6 in mind if you to do it. The first time I converted primary swap and primary ext3 partitions to logical partitions, it took me a while to figure out what was wrong.

8. A program call BootMagic comes with PM. It works very nicely in directing the dual/multi boot process and is fairly easy to fix when something goes wrong (e.g., like when you reload windows and it rewrites the master boot record).

Thanx guys for ur replies (special thnxs 4 whatshisname). I will do that resizing and tell u what happens.

I have resized the ntfs partition using partition magic 7. but I couldn't
redistribute the resulting free space to the linux ext3 partition since
Partition magic cant resize ext2 or ext3 (resizing operation is only
available for FAT,FAT32 and ntfs).
So,I thought may b I can do that resizing thing from within linux.
I downloaded gnu parted.
Here is the info I get using the p command in parted:

Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-19077.187 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 14496.152 primary ntfs boot
2 14496.152 16276.794 extended lba
5 16017.965 16276.794 logical linux-swap
3 16276.794 19077.187 primary ext3

my first question:
why doesn't the unallocated space show up here.
and how can I add it to the current ext3.

second question:
how can I log directly to the console without starting the xserver
since I will need to umount the root so that I cant resize it.

thanx in advance.

PartitionMagic 8 resizes ext2 and ext3 without a problem. This latest version can even do it on hardware Raid 0, Raid 1 and Raid 5. PM8 has several improvements over PM7.