• From: the wasteland
  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 78

Topic: Changing Partition Type

Hiya,

I'd like to give Siduction a whirl on this laptop.  I've got a 10Gb partition left for testing and playing purposes, but when I tried to install Siduction there, it wouldn't recognize that there was any free space at all (even when formatted as ext4 and just unallocated).  I assume its because it wants a primary partition which it turns out I do not have any left on this HDD.  Can I change my /home and free up a primary spot?  Would you do this or advise against it?  If you would, and I can, what application can I use?  Gparted doesn't seem to want to do it for me.  Thanks for your help!

**AKA tiresias on IRC**      shantih   shantih   shantih     
      Contribute however you can!
  • Registered: 2011-09-03
  • Posts: 97

Re: Changing Partition Type

Hey there,

I'm still really new at this, so I can only offer really generic advice.......

When doin' tricky things with your hard drive, it's always best to take a whole image as a backup!!!

I'd suggest Clonezilla or something similar for doin' that. Or gettin' Gparted to copy over all the partitions with data on to another drive (if you've got another drive at least the size of all the partitions you've got with data on them).

Conezilla will make an image (.img, I think), of all your data and store it wherever you please (not on the drive that's bein' copied). It's also useful because the size of the file is the size of how much stuffingtons you've got on there.

As for the actual question itself, I'm sorry, but this is over my head. >_<

If I make people laugh, that makes me pleasant, right?

What if I make people laugh about unpleasant things?
  • From: A kingdom in transition
  • Registered: 2011-06-24
  • Posts: 2,138

Re: Changing Partition Type

Is that ext4 partition empty?
What is the size of it? Oh ok, 10 GB. That is enough to install a distro to experiment with.
It does not have to be primary partition, you know.
grub2 will allow you to boot a distro installed on a non-primary partition.

I dont know the siduction installer, but it should allow you (perhaps some sort of expert install method) to install to that partition. If the installer bails out because there is not enough free space, then delete the partition first by booting from CD or USB.

hth

If you poke the bear it is going to come after you.
  • From: the wasteland
  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 78

Re: Changing Partition Type

Thanks for the replies.
When running the live cd, I click on the "siduction installer" icon and it brings up a few different methods to manipulate partitions, gparted, fdisk, cfdisk, and one more.  The only partitions it will allow me to choose from are what is now /, swap, usr (?), and /home.  The 10GB partition is not even listed as a choice.  The installer never bails out, it just doesn't allow me to choose "unallocated", "free space", or anything.  It's not that big of a deal, I've got an Arch install on my desktop at home that I can reduce in size and try on there, too.  I just thought someone may have gone through the same or similar.  I'll report back later.

**AKA tiresias on IRC**      shantih   shantih   shantih     
      Contribute however you can!
  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,867

Re: Changing Partition Type

If you just delete the partition, and leave free space?

LVM | Catalyst | Wireless
  • From: the wasteland
  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 78

Re: Changing Partition Type

Yeah, tried that.  Will mess around again in a bit.  I'm at work and have to wait a bit before I can break out my lappie! wink

EDIT: Well, I got cfdisk to partition and recognize.  Unfortunately, the install failed due to something like /dev/sda6 is not a block special device".  I'm going to backup my configs and try again later after changing some stuff.  Thanks for the inputs, everyone.

Last edited by a_movingtarget (2012-01-19 23:06:56)

**AKA tiresias on IRC**      shantih   shantih   shantih     
      Contribute however you can!