I have a real newbie question. I want to edit my disk partition table. Mount some drives etc. I like gui tools and gnome's disk utility seems to be able to do everything I want to. My problem: When I want to create a new filesystem on an empty space, I'm not allowed to. I guess I need root access, but I can't login as root to my gnome session and I know no way to start the disk utility from a terminal where I'm the root user, so my question is: How do I do this?

Get a live cd & you can do it!!
OR
start installation with installer cd follow the installation till partition editor create new partition (better going with NTFS)then the partition editor will be automatically refreshed and you can see your new partition ,then quit the installation and restart your pc.
preferable distro's for this method:mint,ubuntu
don't use unknown distros if you are vary much newer to linux!!!
OR
if you are using backtrack (or something like that)try this to get your root password::
1)ifconfig
2)ping IP adress appeared in ifconfig

3)hydra
4)you will get root password in the list given
5)then use it in gparted

In the end I, initially, went for the VNC route. I assigned a VNC account to root and logged in that way and then I was able to run the gnome-disk-util as root. gnome-disk-util could however not fix my disk problem, so I had to go for the install disk route.

The program is called palimpsest, so:

$ sudo palimpsest

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the straightforward answer that commandline requires.

1 members found this post helpful.

thanks Alives! I was looking for this answer also. The disk-utility devs really upset me that they cannot give it a name we can find like gnome-disk-utility or something *SANE* like that. I'm really sick of all the cryptic, non-configurable stuff that comes outta the gnome team. I should fork palimpsest and call it disk-utility, and let it run on non-gnome platforms... I'm sure the gnome team would hate that.

Thanks Alives
I've been messing around for two days trying to find whatever
cryptic phrase these folks have used for the Disk Utility.

I'm running Linux Mint 11 (Katya) and in synaptic package manager if you search for "disk utility" it will find it and install it with an startup item at menu/administration/disk utility.

kb