Resizing

[Nils Kassube]

Stephen wrote:
> On 10/03/2012 4:33 PM, Nils Kassube wrote:
> > Stephen wrote:
> >> Hello I'm using Ubuntu 10, 11. I originally set it up in a 40gb
> >> partition on a windows xp drive. I wanted to give more space to
> >> the ubuntu partition.
> >> I shrunk the windows partition by 30 gig, and tried to make the
> >> linux partition larger but it wouldn't let me because I couldn't
> >> unmount the partition.
> >> So I booted from a live disk and started gparted. All I could do
> >> was shrink the linux partition it wouldn't let me make it larger.
> > 
> > Can you post the output of the command
> > 
> > sudo fdisk -l
> > 
> > in a terminal? That might help us determine the reason for the
> > problem.

> Here is the read out from sudo -l
>    Device Boot     Start        End     Blocks  Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *         63  892377087  446188512+  7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda2      892379134  976768064   42194465+  5  Extended 

As we can see from the last two lines above, there is only a minimal gap 
between the start of sda2 and the end of sda1. How did you shrink the 
Windows partition? IIRC, Windows XP doesn't come with tools to resize 
partitions. Maybe your tool reduced the file system size and didn't 
write the new size to the partition table.

> /dev/sda5     973217763 976768064   1775151  82 Linux swap / Solaris 
> /dev/sda6     892379136 969025535  38323200  83 Linux 
> /dev/sda7     969027584 973215743   2094080  82 Linux swap / Solaris
> 
> I tried again to enlarge the dev/sda2. Which seems to be a container
> for all the linux partitions.

Yes, the extended partition is indeed a container for the logical 
partitions from sda5 upwards.

> It wouldn't give me the option to
> re-size it. I tried again to enlarge the dev/sda6 which is EXT4
> format.

Well, I think the 2047 block gap (~1MB) is left from cylinder boundaries 
and gparted usually wouldn't let you use that gap. As long as the new 
size of the Windows partition isn't written to the partition table, you 
can't enlarge anything.


Nils