How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[bj]

Hi !

I have a red hat 8.0 & Windows 2000 on a intel box with a 60 GB hard drive .

Only 20 GB has been partitioned into 10 GB of NTFS and 9 GB of Linux , file
id 83 ext 3 and 1 GB of Linux swap , file id 82 .

I want to use some free unallocated space from the remaining 40 GB for my
linux .

But I could not get fdisk (from the command prompt ) to show me the
unallocated space  and partition it .

I could see the unallocated free space when I run KDE hardware browser .

I could find the GUI disk druid too .

So How do I partition the unused free space for my red hat 8.0 .

Which utility do I use ?

When ever  I use  fdisk , and choose option n ( to add a partition ) , it
gives an error message saying that I need extended partition or I need to
delete old partition to create a new one .

But I have 40 GB of un used space on my hard drive.

Please advice .

Thank you for your help in advance .

cheers,
bj



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Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[SVisor]

bj wrote:

...
> When ever  I use  fdisk , and choose option n ( to add a partition ) , it
> gives an error message saying that I need extended partition or I need to
> delete old partition to create a new one .
> 
> But I have 40 GB of un used space on my hard drive.

You can only have 4 partitions per disk. If you want more than that, you 
need to make one of them extended (and yes you will loose all data on 
that partition).

// Jarmo

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Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[Ray Olszewski]

At 08:38 AM 2/20/2005 +0545, bj wrote:
>Hi !
>
>I have a red hat 8.0 & Windows 2000 on a intel box with a 60 GB hard drive .
>
>Only 20 GB has been partitioned into 10 GB of NTFS and 9 GB of Linux , file
>id 83 ext 3 and 1 GB of Linux swap , file id 82 .
>
>I want to use some free unallocated space from the remaining 40 GB for my
>linux .
>
>But I could not get fdisk (from the command prompt ) to show me the
>unallocated space  and partition it .
>
>I could see the unallocated free space when I run KDE hardware browser .
>
>I could find the GUI disk druid too .
>
>So How do I partition the unused free space for my red hat 8.0 .
>
>Which utility do I use ?
>
>When ever  I use  fdisk , and choose option n ( to add a partition ) , it
>gives an error message saying that I need extended partition or I need to
>delete old partition to create a new one .
>
>But I have 40 GB of un used space on my hard drive.
>
>Please advice .
>
>Thank you for your help in advance .

I have to guess here a bit to fill in the blanks, but I think your problem 
is an IDE limitation. You listed 4 partitions, and IDE drives are limited 
to 4 "real" partitions in their true partition table, partitions that can 
be either primary partitions or include one extended partition. An extended 
partition can, in turn, be "sub-divided" into more partitions (I think they 
are called virtual partitions or something like that).

So your setup on your hard disk sounds like it is similar to this one on 
one of my drives:

         Command (m for help): p

         Disk /dev/hda: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes
         240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10637 cylinders
         Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

            Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
         /dev/hda1               1           6       45328+  83  Linux
         /dev/hda2               7         135      975240   82  Linux swap
         /dev/hda3             136        2718    19527480   83  Linux
         /dev/hda4            2719       10637    59867640   83  Linux

If I try to add a partition to this drive, I get:

         Command (m for help): n
         You must delete some partition and add an extended partition first

But you only mention 3 partitions above, and I don't know if that is a 
reporting error on your part or an indication of some other problem. So the 
first thing you should do is check your partition table as I did above (run 
fdisk and use its p command).

If you have a fourth, unused partition, either delete it and replace it 
with an extended partition, or simply format and use it if it contains all 
of the remaining 40 GB in a form you want. (Some hard disks, typically ones 
used in laptops, have a very small partition that gets used by the OS for 
some special purpose, I think handling sleep mode, and that might be typing 
up your fourth partition slot without your knowing it. Just a wild guess 
there, though.)

If you do not have a fourth partition in the table, then post again, 
including a report from fdisk providing the info I show above from mine, 
and maybe I (or someone else here) will be able to spot your problem. Oh, 
also report the version of fdisk you are using ( fdisk -v) ... if it's an 
older version, it might have problems with the drive's physical size ... I 
remember running into that, but years ago.


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Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[Jim Nelson]

Ray Olszewski wrote:

> But you only mention 3 partitions above, and I don't know if that is a 
> reporting error on your part or an indication of some other problem. So 
> the first thing you should do is check your partition table as I did 
> above (run fdisk and use its p command).
> 

If he ran with the RH defaults, then it made a 100MB /boot partition, a swap 
partition, and then the / partition.  That'll fill the partition table right up on 
a dual-boot system.

Jim
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Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[Ray Olszewski]

At 10:56 AM 2/20/2005 -0500, Jim Nelson wrote:
>Ray Olszewski wrote:
>
>>But you only mention 3 partitions above, and I don't know if that is a 
>>reporting error on your part or an indication of some other problem. So 
>>the first thing you should do is check your partition table as I did 
>>above (run fdisk and use its p command).
>
>If he ran with the RH defaults, then it made a 100MB /boot partition, a 
>swap partition, and then the / partition.  That'll fill the partition 
>table right up on a dual-boot system.
>
>Jim

That certainly makes sense ... but in his message he did include a list of 
partitions, and it only had 3 entries (only one linux partition, so no 
/boot partition, presumably).

If he just missed the fourth one ... he didn't say *how* he checked the 
partition list ... the procedure I described will find it for him, and he 
may have something of a mess on his hands (depending on the geometry of the 
drive as the BIOS sees it).

If he did not miss it, and he really has only 3 partitions, then he has a 
different problem and needs different help.


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RE: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[bj]

Hi !

I think I did hit the 4 partition limit .

The result of my fdisk -l /dev/hda is as ffs:-


Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7297 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       574   4610623+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2           575      1097   4200997+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3          1098      1228   1052257+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda4          1229      1835   4875727+   7  HPFS/NTFS


Thank you all for your help .

bj



-----Original Message-----
From: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org
[mailto:linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org]On Behalf Of Ray Olszewski
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 10:18 PM
To: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8


At 10:56 AM 2/20/2005 -0500, Jim Nelson wrote:
>Ray Olszewski wrote:
>
>>But you only mention 3 partitions above, and I don't know if that is a
>>reporting error on your part or an indication of some other problem. So
>>the first thing you should do is check your partition table as I did
>>above (run fdisk and use its p command).
>
>If he ran with the RH defaults, then it made a 100MB /boot partition, a
>swap partition, and then the / partition.  That'll fill the partition
>table right up on a dual-boot system.
>
>Jim

That certainly makes sense ... but in his message he did include a list of
partitions, and it only had 3 entries (only one linux partition, so no
/boot partition, presumably).

If he just missed the fourth one ... he didn't say *how* he checked the
partition list ... the procedure I described will find it for him, and he
may have something of a mess on his hands (depending on the geometry of the
drive as the BIOS sees it).

If he did not miss it, and he really has only 3 partitions, then he has a
different problem and needs different help.


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Re: How to add a new partition to an existing Red HAT 8

[Jim Nelson]

bj wrote:
> Hi !
> 
> I have a red hat 8.0 & Windows 2000 on a intel box with a 60 GB hard drive .
> 
> Only 20 GB has been partitioned into 10 GB of NTFS and 9 GB of Linux , file
> id 83 ext 3 and 1 GB of Linux swap , file id 82 .
> 
> I want to use some free unallocated space from the remaining 40 GB for my
> linux .
> 
> But I could not get fdisk (from the command prompt ) to show me the
> unallocated space  and partition it .
> 
> I could see the unallocated free space when I run KDE hardware browser .
> 
> I could find the GUI disk druid too .
> 
> So How do I partition the unused free space for my red hat 8.0 .
> 
> Which utility do I use ?
> 
> When ever  I use  fdisk , and choose option n ( to add a partition ) , it
> gives an error message saying that I need extended partition or I need to
> delete old partition to create a new one .
> 
> But I have 40 GB of un used space on my hard drive.
> 
> Please advice .
> 
> Thank you for your help in advance .
> 
> cheers,
> bj
> 
> 

You have a bit of a problem.  You'll need to create an extended partition to 
handle anything beyond the 4 basic partions.  Let's make an example:

# fdisk /dev/hda

...blah...

Command (m for help): p

If it shows something like:

Disk /dev/hda: ..blah..

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1       20480   something   86  NTFS
/dev/hda2	    20481	40960	something   83  Linux
/dev/hda3	    40961	41960   something   82  Linux swap

Then you're okay.

Do:

Command (m for help): n
Command action
    e   extended
    p   primary partition (1-4)
e
Partition number (1-4): 4

and that'll create the extended partitions you need.

Then, you can have up to 16 partitions iirc.

If you have all 4 primary partitions full, you have to do a few more steps.

boot into single-user mode (init 1)

# swapoff -a
# fdisk /dev/hda

Then, you remove your swap partition, make the extended partition in the hole you 
made in the partition table, create the swap partition in /dev/hda5 in the same 
place on the hard drive you had it before.  Make whatever other partitions you 
want in /dev/hda6, etc.

After you are done, do:

# mkswap /dev/hda5
# vi /etc/fstab

and modify the entry for the swap partition from /dev/hda3 (or wherever) to 
/dev/hda5, and reboot.

To make your life easier, you might want to look at LVM - 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/.  Came to Linux from AIX.

It's made chaining hard drives and dealing with expanding directories much easier. 
  Windows has similar functionality in Server 2003 and (I think) XP Pro - just 
haven't played with it enough to be sure.

Good luck,
Jim

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