Partioning problems

[paulSC]

I'm trying to install Slackware 10.2 and have run into a partitioning problem. When I go into fdisk to display it shows the free space I have left for linux. When I create a swap parition it marks all the remaining free space on the drive as unusable. I have windows xp on the hard drive too. Windows has 2 primary partitions. but for some reason its marking the rest of the drive as unusable after making a swap partition. If I delete the swap I see the correct tota again. Any ideas why this may be happening?

thanks
paul

[EnigmaOne]

I'm a snit about the sequence in which I create partitions, so I'll go with my "snittiness."

Create the partition for your Slack / first, then do the swap.

Otherwise, I really don't have a believable answer for you.

[je_fro]

That's a new one on me...I've never seen that before. Are they all primary partitions?

[paulSC]

The first time I tried I made the primary linux partition first with the same result. Then I deleted it and tried to make the swap first. The strange thing is I've installed Linux numerous times. Sometimes on its own hard drive sometimes on the same drive with windows. This drive actually had linux on it before but for some reason it aint workin this time.

thanks.
paul

[M0E]

Maybe you should try a different partitioning software. I installed Vector Linux (Slackware Based) on a machine that has XP too and repartitioned with Partition Magic.

[paulSC]

I may try Partition Magic, good idea.

[saikee]

My guess is that it is a dead simple hard disk convention in a PC. A hard disk can only have 4 primary partitions and any space left behind is unusable.

To use the space just make the 4th partition as a logical partition. This triggers the formation of an extended partition and all the space after the swap, which will be known as hda5 (sda5 if the disk is a Sata), will be usable.

Satisfaction guaranteed, otherwise how the hell I can get 63 partitions out of a hard disk?

Partition Magic is a Windows program and should remain to be so because it is "tragic" for any Linux user wanting to know about hard disk partitions. I learn far more hard disk partitioning from the Linux "cfdisk" and "fdisk" programs.

[paulSC]

I didn't exceed 4 primary partitions. After I added the third it marked everything else as unusable.

paul

[EnigmaOne]

You may have invalid information in the partition table.

Run Partition Magic against the drive. It should tell you if it needs to make PT fixups. If it doesn't , try validading the partition information. Weird stuff should crawl out of the wood work at that time.

[saikee]

Believe me. Do it with a Live CD and bring up the "cfdisk" program, with a command like "cfdisk /dev/hda". Everything is shown up there.

Many proprietary PCs have a hidden partition for backing up XP system files without the user's knowledge. Also some PC vendors reserve a small partition for storing hardware drivers too.

[paulSC]

I see what you're saying. I used cfdisk too but had the same results. I've never bought a prebuilt computer. I've built every computer I've owned.

paul

[saikee]

Can you paste the content of
fdisk -l
if you still have a problem with it?

It is the PC standard that a PC BIOS always reads 64 bytes starting from the 447th position from the beginning of every hard disk and takes every 16 bytes thereafter for the description of each of the 4 primary partitions.

If a dead space is encountered before the 4th partition is assigned then something is not right because that dead space can be used for the last primary partition.

[rdeschene2]

Open source partitioning tool option (in case anyone's interested):
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Has the graphical "qtparted" partitioning tool available on a bootable CD. I've used this several times to adjust partitions on systems with native NTFS and FAT32 (egads!) partitions, and always with success. Even when I was partitioning a disk with an existing OS on it. Always ran (if Windows was the existing OS) defrag first.

Note that if you try to split an existing partition into two, it will place the new one at the end of the current one. Just takes some planning.

[dannybunkins]

I think the slackware install actally suggests that you use cfdisk during the partition process. cfdisk is much easier to use than fdisk and i am pretty sure that it is on the 10.2 install CD.