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".

You can only have 4 primary partitions. If you have extended partitions then you need to use one of your primary partition table slots to create the partition table entries for the extended partitions. Thus if you want more than four partitions then you can only have 3 primary partitions and use the fourth primary partition table slot to hold up to four extended partition entries.

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.

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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.