when to resize partitions

[Ray Parrish]

Ashley Benton wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Stephen Constantinou 
> <stephanos at writeme.com <mailto:stephanos at writeme.com>> wrote:
>
>     Dear All
>
>     I have a PC with a 160 GB HDD.  It is partitioned as follows
>
>                SIZE      USED
>     sda1 fat16    41MB    33MB
>     sda2 ntfs  78279MB 56634MB
>     sda4 fat32  3380MB  2366MB
>
>     sda5  ext3  4186MB   604MB
>     sda6  swop  4186MB     0MB
>     sda7  ext3  8381MB  3316MB
>     sda8  ext3 28697MB  1216MB
>     sda9  ext3 28648MB  6842MB
>     sda10 ext3  4194MB   100MB
>
>
>     It boots XP and Mandriva.  My intention was to install Kubunto 8.10 to
>     replace Mandriva.  I thought I knew what I was doing until I got the
>     Prepare Diskspace section of the installer.
>
>     After choosing to be guided over partition 8 I was offered a slide bar
>     that seemed to change partition 8 from the initial setting of
>
>     sda8, 13.4GB 50% AND kubuntu 8.10, 13.4GB, 50%
>
>     I could move the bar left to increase the kubuntu
>     partition/section but
>     only reduce sda8 to 4.1GB 15% and kubuntu to 85%.
>
>     I chose this 15/85 ratio not fully understanding what I was doing
>     but at
>     least believing I was not altering the windows installation.
>
>     As I progressed I got to a stage where it confirmed I was about to
>     create
>     partition 11 of SCSi1 (0,0,0) (sda) as ext3 and
>     partition 12 of SCSi1 (0,0,0) (sda) as swop
>
>     Now I am confused.
>
>     Am I really creating more partitions and how do I simply use the
>     existing partitions for kubuntu.  Perhaps this was not a problem but I
>     cannot see how creating more partitions is what I want to do and
>     why can
>     I not use the whole of partition 8 for kubuntu?
>
>     I abandoned it and am posting this question to be cautious.
>
>     Any guidance and help appreciated.
>
Hello,

It's possible to skip the partitioning step altogether. You already have 
a 4 GB swap partition that you can use, and need only empty the current 
Mandriva partition, and install to it. I see it currently has a little 
over a GB used in that partition. If it's just the Mandriva operating 
system, and no data that you care to keep, simply select that partition 
to install to, and then select the "manual" option when the partition 
manager comes up.

This will allow you to skip the partitioning step, and go right on to 
installing Kubuntu into sda8, which will overwrite anything currently 
there. If you want to make that partition a bit bigger, you could do 
that as well, with the manual method. I used this method the last time I 
installed Ubuntu, but I forgot to set up a swap partition, so I had to 
create a swap file once in Ubuntu, and mount it at /mnt/ which works 
just as well as using a dedicated partition.

Since you already have a huge 4 GB swap partition set up, you don't need 
another one. I read an article the other day that told how to share a 
swap partition between Linux and Windows, so if you;re interested in 
that, I'll dig through my browser history, and post the url here.

If for some reason the manual partitioning option will still not allow 
you to increase the size of sda8, then I would take the advice of the 
other person who answered previously, and use a Gparted Live CD to do it 
before the install. If you do that don't make the mistake I made while 
using Gparted Live. While I was using it to resize my Windows and Ubuntu 
partitions to take back some of the space Ubuntu grabbed during the 
guided install [I didn't notice the slider adjustment, so it got more 
than I wanted to give it] I got bored, and began fiddling with things in 
the Gparted interface while it was resizing things.

I found a setting to hide some component of the Gparted Live desktop, 
and made the mistake of attempting to set it to hidden. Since it's a CD, 
and read only, it's attempt to comply and record the setting didn't go 
well. The hard drive light quit flashing, indicating that the 
repartitioning had stopped, the computer became unresponsive, and I 
eventually had to give up and hard power down.

I got lucky, as the only thing I had to do to fix the damage from the 
interrupted partitioning process, was re-installing Ubuntu. If it had 
gotten much farther along in the process, I'm sure I would have lost 
Windows as well. So... it's best to leave Gparted Live alone while it 
runs. 8-)

Later, Ray Parrish

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