Hello all,
Here's the thing. I have multiple partitions due to installing linux then deleting windows < I reformatted the partitions into the following set up

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 277 2094088+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 278 616 2562840 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 * 617 1281 5027400 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 1282 1298 128520 82 Linux swap

So you can see I do not at least one of these partitions. What I would like to do is make hda3 into hda1 and hda1 and 2 into hda2. this way I have my /usr on one partition and the rest on one. Does anyone have any suggestions?

use parted, a great Linux utility. Here's one place to get the rpm version, but there are many other places...

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat....i386.rpm.html

I'm not sure I understood what you want to do, you cannot turn hda3 on hda1 but you can mount the new partitions ( I think they are hda1 and hda2 ) wherever you want in the tree in /etc/fstab, just write the mounting point you want the partitions to be mounted.

For the details: man fstab.

well I think that the parted is the best option here. I want to lower the number of partitions by combining and move there place on the drive. thank you so much profjohn, ... china they allow you to post on the net, could you not post "subversive material"?