Partition problem

[Mario Vukelic]

On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 16:01 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote:
>     I think sda1 is empty and sda2 is Ubuntu Gutsy.

Can you delete those?

> > 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"
> >
> >
> >   
>     Well doing this is the reason for all the other. I will want to put 
> 8.10 on like sda7 if the darn thing can be done.

You can certainly manipulate the partition sizes. Since sda5 and 6 are
mounted as / and /home, you cannot unmount them in a running system, you
you will have to boot from a live cd and then use parted, gparted, or
similar.

Imagine the extended partition as a container. The total size of the
logical partitions inside it can be as big as the extended partition is.
So, you  first need to shrink the logical partitions and then you can
add new logical partitions in the free space inside the extended
partition.

You can also reuse sda1 and 2 in some way. And finally you can
reinstall, this might be the easiest way.

BE ABSOLUTELY SURE TO HAVE A GOOD BACKUP. 

Here are instructions for parted:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_chapter/parted_2.html

Here are hints for the extended/logical partition thing:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=866415

Otherwise, just google for "resize partition logical gparted" without
the quotes and you will find plenty of advice. I'll rather not go into
more details because frankly, the ability of figuring out what to do
from the Google hits is a prerequisite of the ability to perform the
necessary steps without wrecking your install.