repartitioning assistance - making one partitioning from two with gparted
I am repartitioning for the first time my linux disk (secondary harddisk in my system). I always keep two linux installs on this disk, one is my main everyday linux and the other whatever I am experimenting with. At some point, I let one of the distros split 20 gig into two, a reiser for root and ext3 for /home. That distro I will now like to replace and I called up gparted to delete the two partitions it took and make one ext3 partition for a new install of something to play with. I was asked whether to make this new partition a primary or extended and got stumped. Called off operations and did fdisk -l to see what I have and now am more confused than ever as fdisk is listing both of those partitions as type 83 (but one of them is reiser). Output of fdisk -l for my secondary disk:
Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00029c6f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 76 610438+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sdb2 77 2626 20482875 83 Linux /dev/sdb3 * 2627 3786 9317700 83 Linux /dev/sdb4 3787 4870 8707230 83 Linux sdb3 and sdb4 are the two I want to combine into one ext3 partition. Some guidance is appreciated. I know enough not to mess with main install on sdb2 but I still feel queasy about making the new one a "primary". |
Quote:
I recommend that you combine partitions 3 and 4 into a primary partition, /dev/sdb3. In the future you can decide whether you will use the fourth partition slot to describe a primary partition or use that slot to describe up to 4 extended partitions. ------------------------- Steve Stites |
That was what I was going to do, thanks for telling me it is okay to make another primary! I was just afraid I would leave my main linux (sdb2) unbootable if I made something after it "primary"...doesn't hurt to ask :)
Speaking of bootable, I am not sure where that flag came from on my linux disk since only windows needs it...probably the mfr utility when I originally installed the disk itself. The only stumper I have left is why fdisk says the file type of the reiser partition sdb3 is 83 when I thought that was only ext2 (or 2?) but since I am deleting it doesn't really matter. I have been running linux for years and using the same partitioning scheme since like forever. Although I have installed different distros to play with, I never resized anything - original partitioning was done with mfr's utilities when the disks themselves were installed and only the file format changed through this time. Though I did make that split and switch from ext3 to reiser at some point some distro's wizard must have guided me through it. |
Type 0x83 is (generic) for "Linux" - the filesystem is irrelevant.
Remove the boot flag when you feel the urge - won't hurt anything. |
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