Resize Partition, problems
 

I am trying to resize a partition in CentOS (red hat). I have tried booting from a GParted livecd. It shows my /boot partition correctly, but my root partition is shown as unformatted, and as such is not able to be resized.

Any advice?

What filesystem is your CentOS root partition ?, maybe use the latest Knoppix CD to resize.

The root partition shows up as unformatted, but I think it should be ext3. GParted is a livecd dedicated to paritioning drives.

So--CentOS works but its / partition does not show correctly in GParted?? Hmmmmmmm
I would simply try another partition manager for a second opinion. QTParted on the Knoppix live CD, or any of several on the Ultimate Boot CD. (Both of these are good to have in any event, so nows the time......;)

I've tried QTParted both on another linux install, and on the one I am trying to expand. The drive still shows up as unformatted.

The drive or the partition??
Try doing fdisk -l and posting the results here.

The partition, sorry.

Also, I had thought I mentioned this in my first post, but this is a virtual machine running on a virtual hard disk. I don't think that is causing the problem, though. The /boot formatting shows up fine.

Here is fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 104.8 GB, 104857804800 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12748 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 2549 20370420 8e Linux LVM

Here is parted print:
Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-100000.195 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 101.975 primary ext3 boot
2 101.975 19994.963 primary lvm

Why would you think that??

If you run fdisk inside your virtual environment, it does not know anything about what is outside. But if you boot for CD to run something like Gparted, then the picture is very different.

Give us a complete description of the system---ie where is this virtual disk living?

The virtual disk is on a real disk. It is running in Parallels desktop in Mac OS X.

I was booting the virtual machine from a GParted ISO, but the virtual drive was still (virtually) connected.

Now I am REALLY lost....How were you running GParted when it would not see your partition correctly? Booting from a CD? Or--as you say "Booting from ISO". Where is the ISO file located?

Does booting a virtual machine from an ISO give the same answer as booting a real machine from a real CD? I have no clue, but I have a hunch that this is at the core of your issue.

The ISO file was located in the real, OS X environment. The VM had it set as the CD, and was set to boot from the CD. In that environment, it was a CD.

I could burn a disk and use the VM with it, but it would be the same thing as far as I know.

Is there any way to format disks but keep the contents?