Need Help with re-partitioning

Hi,

My new system has one 500 GB drive. After installing Suse linux 11 it has the following partitions.

/dev/sda 465.76 (Drive)
/dev/sda1/ 50.47
/dev/sda2/ 2.0

I need the system to have 5 more partitions, however, the “Expert Partitioner” in YAST will only allow me to add two more - a limit of 4 per disk.

I also need pre-defined mount points for the new partitions so I believe that means they must be primary.

Is it possible to do this with only one disk? Is there a way to make that disk seem like more than one to Linux so I can get more partitions?

What is the best approach? Or do I just need to add another drive to the system?

Thanks for any help.

Regards,

Mel

Hi
Assuming your booting off the MBR, then in the first screen re-scan the
drive, then select the drive and delete all existing partitions, then
create the following;

sda1 - /boot 512MB
sda2 - create an extended partition to use the rest of the disk
sda5 - / say 40GB
sda6 - some swap (depends on ram)
sda7 - / some other
sda8 through sda15

or

sda1 - /boot
sda2 - /
sda3 - swap
sda4 - create an extended partition to use the rest of the disk
sda5 - / some other
sda6 through sda15

So the trick is the extended partition.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
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Hi Malcom,

Thanks for your reply. I thought I would need to use extended partition but am new to Linux (from Windows) and am still learning.

How do I boot off the MBR? Is that the second option that comes up that says “Failsafe” on boot? When I take that option I get the command prompt.

Can I use commands at that point? Is there a command like FDISK in windows? What linux commands do I need?

If I delete all existing partitions won’t that delete the OS version that is currently installed? Will I need to re-install after partitioning?

Thanks,

Mel

Thanks,

Mel

Hi Mel,

How do I boot off the MBR? Is that the second option that comes up that says “Failsafe” on boot?

No, you’d then already be beyond that stage. It’s a general setup question during boot loader configuration, controlling where the boot sector is placed.

Can I use commands at that point? Is there a command like FDISK in windows?

Not in the sense you’re asking: You’re talking to the boot loader program at that point, not to some Linux shell. All you have are the commands offered by the boot loader, i.e. to manually alter the boot process for this single run.

You’d typically boot a recovery system, i.e. from a Linux installation DVD, to get a shell that can access and alter the contents of the installed system.

If I delete all existing partitions won’t that delete the OS version that is currently installed?

Yes, it’s the same as with MS Win. The problem is, when the disk is already fully allocated by the existing partitions, you’ll need to make room… there are different ways to do so. Many of then require at least mid-level admin knowledge to know what you’re doing, even if the tools pretend to cover for all that… if there’s just the slightest problem, you can easily make the current installation unusable. And if you don’t care about that, well, then just re-install and partition correctly during the install process :wink:

Will I need to re-install after partitioning?

Basically, it depends :wink: If you delete partitions without taking special measures, the content is gone. So if you delete system partitions, the installation from there is gone. If you’re just adding new partitions in previously un-allocated disk areas, then no reinstall is required.

Assuming you have enough unallocated disk space, you could

  • create extended partitions as needed

  • from your point of you, these can be mounted like “basic partitions”.

  • As you already know, you can have four basic partition entries, one of which can be of type “extended partition” and gets sub-partitioned.

  • accordingly, basic partitions are referenced by the numbers 1 to 4 (/dev/sda1, sda2…) while extended partitions start at “5”, no matter how many basic partitions there are

Regards,
Jens

Jens,

Adding the extended partition did it. Thanks very much for your help.

Regards,

Mel