Hi all,

I've just moved from Mandrake 9.1 to Redhat 9. I don't like mandrake, but I love redhat. However I'm having a problem:

I've lost 2gb of disk space.

There is 5gb of space allocated to linux - I found the redhat partitioning program very complicated compared to mandrakes, so I just told it to install over the top and partition automatically.

Now when I use Kdiskfree, it shows 2 linux partitions, /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3. (/dev/hda1 is my windows one). Now, /hda2 is 100mb and is mounting at '/boot'. /dev/hda3 is 2.5gb is mounted at /. Now that adds up to nearly 3gb. However, I have allocated 5gb of space to linux. I'm guessing that the 2gb is unpartitioned, anyone have any ideas on how to claim it back?

Using linux i should add, I'm determined not to boot back into windows for this one.

fdisk -l /dev/hda

should skow all partitions. If you have 2 gb's extra left over - you can either use Parted to resize hda3, or create a seperate partition hda4 and mount it as /usr, /home, or whatever you need. BTW, I'm assuming you have no swap - you didn't mention it. If you do (most likely), maybe that is hda4, so just create a hda5

; )

Fdisk command can't be found, according to bash.

I have no swap, or at least I think i dont

edit: When I used mandrake, my third partition was /home. If I mount it to there, will my current files inside there be moved over or will I have to start again?

did you run fdisk as root?

[root@mainPC martin]# fdisk -1 /dev/hda
bash: fdisk: command not found

This is odd...

/sbin/fdisk

Using su instead of su - will use the environment of the current user and not roots.

Ok, finally got it working, this is the output :

/dev/hda1 * 1 4462 35840983+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 4463 4475 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4476 4810 2690887+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 4811 5005 1566337+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 4811 5005 1566306 82 Linux swap

So there is a linux swap partition, but for some very odd reason hda4 is formatted (with my 2gb of spcae one it) as FAT32?! Why on earth would the redhat partitioner do that?

hda4 is an extended partition.
the logical drive hda5 is using all that space.
it's not fat32.

What's even funnier is that hda4 and hda5 seems to be the same partition - look at the starts and ends.
; )

The simplest way to solve this?

Probably remove hda4 and hda5.
then re-partition hda4 creating a 100-200mb swap. Then use the rest to create a hda5 partition with /home, or something.

OTOH, if you want to do a little more work, remove 4 and 5. Then resize hda3 to whatever size you want with parted, creating possibly a hda4 for swap.

wait whansard, shouldn't partitions 1-4 be primary?

Why is 4 an extension for 5? That's a pretty messy set-up, IMO.

I agree, it's a terrible setup. For some reason the swap space is 2gb, which is insane as I have 768mb of RAM anyway.

Anyone got any good instructions on how to do this. I'd like to resize hda3 if possible?

an extended partition is considered a type of primary
partition. just one that you can split up.
turn your swap off, delete 5 and 4.
use diskdrake to make 3 bigger, if you want.

Just to support for whansard is saying.

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on a drive.
One of the primary partitions can be used as an extended partition. An extended partition is basically a container for logical drives. You can have up to 64 logical drives.

To make hda3 bigger you will need to boot from the 1st install CD and select rescue mode. You don't want it to be mounted. Delete partitions 4 & 5 and then resize 3. You can use parted but it has limitations depending on what kind of filesystem it is.

Then create a swap if you want one.

Which program should I use? Parted?