Partition problem

Steven Davies-Morris sdavmor at systemstheory.net
Fri Oct 24 21:41:19 UTC 2008


Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 14:48 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote:
>>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>> /dev/sda1   *           1         974     7823623+  83  Linux
>> /dev/sda2             975        1948     7823655   83  Linux
>> /dev/sda3            1949        2192     1959930   82  Linux swap / Solaris
>> /dev/sda4            2193        5598    27358695    5  Extended
>> /dev/sda5            2193        4625    19543041   83  Linux
>> /dev/sda6            4626        5598     7815591   83  Linux
> 
> On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 15:11 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote:
>> /dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
>> /dev/sda5 on /home type ext3 (rw)
> 
>>     It does not tell me much.
> 
> I know. It does tell me a few things, though.
> 
> For one, it tells me that /dev/sda4, which is an extended partition
> according to your fstab output, contains /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6 as
> logical partitions. This was maybe done by Ubuntu or by yourself at
> installation time, because the PC spec allows only 4 partitions per
> disk. You probably already had /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2, and /dev/sda3 is
> swap. So, to create both / and /home partitions, an extended partition
> had to be used as the 4th partition. Extended partitions can in turn
> contain several logical partitions. It's just a braindeadness of the PC
> spec.
> 
> It also tells me that /dev/sda6 and /dev/sda5 are mounted as /
> and /home, respectively. 
> 
> I don't believe that your OS changed these partitions (or any partitions
> for that matter) all by itself. I cannot imagine why or how it would do
> that.
> 
> 
> What do you use /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 for, anyway?
> 
> At this point I'd rather not go into whether there are ways to
> "change[ing] something that lets [you] use the whole hard drive without
> deleting sda5 and sda6"

I bet he has several version of Ubuntu installed: gutsy, hardy, intrepid.
-- 
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