Hello,

I would like to install another linux distro on my system, but the way I set up my partitions in the beginning seems to be holding me back. Partitions look something like this:

hda1 20G NTFS (win XP)
hda2 10G FAT32 (shared linux/windows)
hda3 100M /boot
hda4 extended
hda5 17G /root
hda6 1G /swap

Essentially, I want to take ~7Gb from the FAT partition for the new install. I tried just resizing it to 2.5 G, leaving 7.5G of free space afterwards, but discovered that it wouldn't install in any free space unless it was at the end of the disk. This led me to try to move all my data to fill the empty space, but I then discovered (I thought) that qtparted didn't deal with ext3 very well. I used tune2fs to convert to ext2, but qtparted still wouldn't move my boot partition or anything after into that space.

Here's the question: what can I do to make room for a new installation?

BTW: adding a new hard drive is not an option, since this is all on a laptop.

Thanks,

matt

After you resized that 10GB partition to 2.5GB and leaving 7.5GB free space, did you partition that free space?
You can't install anything to free disk space. You will have to partition it and format the partition. Linux can be installed to any disk partition that is large enough for all that you want to put on it.
You'll also want to think about the boot loader to boot that installation. If you already have lilo or grub installed you can edit it to reflect the new install.

It won't let me format the space for some reason, I suspect because I already have 3 primary partitions. I seem to remember reading something about a limit on the number of primary partitions one can put on a drive before having to go into extended partitions.

Yes you can only have 3 primary parts on a drive but Linux will install to an extended part.

You could delete that 10GB part and make new partitions out of the free space if it is complaining about trying to separate that primary part. Back up the data on that partition and delete it. One way of fixing it.

I tried deleting the 10G partiton like you said, but it would only let me create another primary partition there. It wouldn't let me create an extended partition in that space. That would allow me to put a new root partition there, but I still need a new boot partition, right?

I suppose I could put that there and squish my existing root partition to add new boot and shared partitions, but if I could, I'd like to have things a little more organized than that. Do you have any insight on why I can't just move ext2 partitions? my partition editor doesn't have a problem moving NTFS or FAT, why is ext2 special?