Partition trouble: Gparted errors and Slackware says partition overlap

Hi. I am trying to install a dual boot of Slackware and Windows 7 on my laptop, and I am having all sorts of trouble with the partitions. The computer came with 4 OEM primary partitions that can't be deleted, so I found a Windows tool called Mini Tool Partition Wizard to turn the least crucial one of these partitions into a logical partition, which is to say that it put an extended partition around it and made it logical.

So then, I went in with Gparted and shrank my C: partition, moved the next partition so they would be side by side, and grew and the extended partition to fill the empty space. From here I thought it would be easy to create two Slackware partitions inside the extended one--one for the whole system and one for swap (I will add a home partition later, but right now don't have the space for it and I just want to get everything working).

The first part of this plan worked fine. However, when I try to create the swap partition, I get the following Gparted error:

GParted 0.9.1 --enable-libparted-dmraid

Libparted 2.3
Create Logical Partition #1 (linux-swap, 8.40 GiB) on /dev/sda 00:00:01 ( ERROR )

create empty partition 00:00:00 ( SUCCESS )

path: /dev/sda7
start: 958939136
end: 976558079
size: 17618944 (8.40 GiB)
set partition type on /dev/sda7 00:00:01 ( SUCCESS )

new partition type: linux-swap(v1)
create new linux-swap file system 00:00:00 ( ERROR )

mkswap -L "" /dev/sda7

/dev/sda7: No such file or directory

========================================


After this error, Gparted and fdisk -l look like this:

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/7909/scrnm.jpg

This is my first attempt at fdisk, but despite the Gparted message about /dev/sda7 not existing, doesn't fdisk show it right there? Maybe I'm not interpreting this right.

To see if I could fix whatever was wrong with cfdisk during the Slackware installation, I popped in the Slackware DVD and booted it up. But cfdisk will not even run, giving me a fatal error about partition overlap.

I would really appreciate some help figuring this out.

Thanks!

Did you use swapon command?

Originally Posted by EDDY1 Did you use swapon command?

Thank you for your reply. No, I used Gparted. It has an option to format a partition as swap which I have used successfully many times int the past. However, I forgot to mention before that just in case it was an issue with creating a swap partition specifically, I also tried to make it ext2, and it also failed with exactly the same errors.

Is there anything in the fdisk code that should be interpreted to mean I have overlapping partitions, as cfdisk said? If not, why would fdisk say one thing and cfdisk say another? Am I just not reading things correctly? I don't know where to go from here.

Why not just use cfdisk in slackware cd, you already had made room.
Easier to erase the 2 partitions sda6 & 7 and do it form the installer.

Well I just tried, and unfortunately it didn't work. Cfdisk is reading it like I never made room at all. I deleted those two partitions in Gparted (because I couldn't get into Cfdisk of course), and went back to the Slackware installation disk. Now, Cfdisk will run, but it is showing the sda5 partition (the OEM partition that used to be primary that I changed to logical and then resized) as 33 GiB long, which is the size it was before I resized it. It should now only be about 51 MiB long.

Here is the Cfdisk readout:

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/7788/img2535u.jpg

So then I tried Gparted and Fdisk -l again, and they both show the sda5 partition as 51 MiB long, as it should be:

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/2485/74212920.jpg

So I guess the "partition overlap" message makes a bit of sense now, because Cfdisk was thinking the sda5 partition was its original size and that the other two partitions (sda6 and 7) were sitting on top of it. But why was it reading it that way, and why are these programs telling me different things? I don't understand it.

When you're resizing a partition to make room for another one, it's always best to leave the freed up space as unallocated space. Then do the new partition creation and formatting during installation of whatever distro your putting on.

Originally Posted by brianL When you're resizing a partition to make room for another one, it's always best to leave the freed up space as unallocated space. Then do the new partition creation and formatting during installation of whatever distro your putting on.

Well, with the sda6 and 7 partitions gone, that is pretty much the situation I was supposed to be in now. Unfortunately, Cfdisk during the Slackware installation is not showing any unallocated space.

I ended up backing up the OEM partition and deleting it so I could rebuild the extended partition from scratch. Worked. I wish I knew what happened here, though. I thought I understood partitioning, but now I am not so sure.

I'd be especially interested to know if these three programs were indeed giving me contradictory information, or if I was reading/using them wrong.

I'm glad I've never had to deal with multiple OEM partitions. Everything I've done has been a straightforward dual or triple boot.

Originally Posted by brianL I'm glad I've never had to deal with multiple OEM partitions. Everything I've done has been a straightforward dual or triple boot.

Thank you, that makes it slightly better. I was beginning to feel like a complete dolt.