Two partitions from a bad install

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 23:46, Patrick Newberry <PNewberry at habitat.org> wrote:
> So I then start with a 10.4 version of xubuntu it gets past setting the base
> system. Setting of the passwords  and into the setting up of software it
> fails. I was not able to see the exact reason for the failure. I went back
> and did a disk check and it passed that.
>
> I went back to the install base system step and tried that but then it
> failed in that step.

> I had a copy of the regular ubunutu 10.4.1 so I built it and started the
> install again. It recognized my windoz and (I’m working from memory here)
> the screen showed a graphical  image of the disk at the top of the screen
> that showed the windows and the rest of the drive … then some options and at
> t he bottom it showed another graphical image with the windoz and four
> partitions 5, 6, 7 and 8 (eg. two linux and two swaps)

> So now when I boot I have two linux options and one windows option. The
> second linux boots and runs fine, the windows option works fine, but the
> first linux attempt and 20 gig of space are well not working. I just like to
> get rid of it. So what would be the best approach to reclaim these two bad
> partitions on this system?

Using your partition manager (gparted) from _live cd boot_ (not on
running system I'm pretty sure that will fail) do the following:
 - delete the failed linux partition
 - delete both swap partitions
 - move the good (second Ubuntu install) partition (not swap)
   backwards to beginning of now empty space
 - create linux swap partition if you desire at end of free space
 - expand good linux partition to fill remaining available space

Alternative to last step, is to create a 'data' partition if you wish.
Either way, you might like to install ext2ifs into Windows.
See http://www.fs-driver.org/

> I guess that would involve modifying the grub file too so it does not show

Better to reclaim space with repartitioning as above.

Hopefully you don't need to modify grub.

>From live CD, you can just reinstall grub.
That might be a good idea when you finish the partitioning changes.

Good luck
Zenaan