Remove Windows Partitions; expand Ubuntu's

[MysticGold04]

I know this can be done, but Ubuntu's partition is currently in an "extended partition" /dev/sda4... will this pose an issue if trying to remove two ntfs partitions and make Ubuntu the only os on this machine?

Is there a utility that I can use to copy the Ubuntu partition to the front of the drive, and then expand that partition over the rest of the drive??
Does GParted support moving partitions?

Thanks in advance!

[caljohnsmith]

How about first posting:

sudo fdisk -lu
And please identify all your partitions, including the ones you want to delete. That will give a better idea if what you want to do is feasible or not.

[MysticGold04]

How about first posting:

sudo fdisk -lu
And please identify all your partitions, including the ones you want to delete. That will give a better idea if what you want to do is feasible or not.

Ok.. here's the output from fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x92e4538c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 82750814 41375376 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 82750815 226548629 71898907+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 226548630 312576704 43014037+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 226548693 309588614 41519961 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 309588678 312576704 1494013+ 82 Linux swap

I want to get rid of the two Windows partitions, and move the Linux partition to the top, then expand out the space, or possibly create a new /home partition to keep any data separate. Thats why there are two NTFS partitions.

What I would like to find out is if I can do this without having to re-install Ubuntu. I suppose if I have to, its not a big deal, but it took a few hours to get it running with the eee kernel and such.

[caljohnsmith]

OK, from the Live CD, if you open gparted (System > Admin > Partition Editor), what you could do is delete sda1 and sda2, and then you could do a simple copy/paste of the Ubuntu sda5 partition into that newly created space using gparted. If that goes OK, after that you could mount the new Ubuntu partition to make sure everything is there as expected, and once you've confirmed that, you could delete/reformat the old sda5 Ubuntu partition. You could then use the space freed from sda5 as a data partition if you want; I would recommend just having a data partition rather than actually moving your entire home directory to that partition, but it's up to you. Also, when you first run gparted, it would be good to right-click the swap partition and select "swapoff", otherwise gparted may not allow you to make the changes you want to. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

[MysticGold04]

Sounds good, I'll give it a try, however, I think that the data partition (only 40GB) will be too small so I might have to expand it some. Also, I'll probably have to make changes to the Grub boot menu too I assume? Thanks for the help!

[caljohnsmith]

Sounds good, I'll give it a try, however, I think that the data partition will be too small so I might have to expand it some. Also, I'll probably have to make changes to the Grub boot menu too I assume? Thanks for the help!
Yes, you'll need to reinstall Grub to the MBR (Master Boot Record), and if you are using a Ubuntu version prior to 8.10, you'll also need to modify the Grub menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst file). Once you are done with your repartitioning and the dust has settled, please post the output of:

sudo fdisk -lu
And identify your new partitions. We can work from there if you want.

[MysticGold04]

successful output from fdisk now...

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x92e4538c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 83039984 41519961 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 83039985 91297394 4128705 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 91297395 312576704 110639655 83 Linux

now I just need to set the permissions on my /data directory that is now mounted on /dev/sda3. I also removed the Windows boot option from grub. Funny thing is now is on boot up, I see the text as it boots... starting services, etc. Minor complaint though. It all works as it should. Thanks a bunch for the help!! :)

[ranch hand]

If you look in you /boot/grub/menu.lst you will see something like this


title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid 26f31843-6d54-45e3-8363-1557ff117166
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=26f31843-6d54-45e3-8363-1557ff117166 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet

It sounds to me like you are missing the "quiet" entry and thus all the text.


gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

will let you edit that file.

[caljohnsmith]

Funny thing is now is on boot up, I see the text as it boots... starting services, etc. Minor complaint though. It all works as it should. Thanks a bunch for the help!! :)
Did you also change the swap partition in any way? Because if you did, its UUID probably changed, and losing the Ubuntu splash screen on start up is a symptom of when the swap partition does not mount correctly at boot time. How about posting:


free
sudo blkid -c /dev/null
cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
cat /etc/fstab

And we can see if that's maybe the issue. You could also check your menu.lst to make sure it has the "quiet" flags that Ranch Hand pointed out, because that would also cause the same behavior; but my guess would be your menu.lst is probably still OK.

[MysticGold04]

If you look in you /boot/grub/menu.lst you will see something like this


title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid 26f31843-6d54-45e3-8363-1557ff117166
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=26f31843-6d54-45e3-8363-1557ff117166 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet

It sounds to me like you are missing the "quiet" entry and thus all the text.


gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

will let you edit that file.

Yep, checked on that when I went in to remove the Windows entries. The quiet switch(es) are still in place.

[MysticGold04]

Did you also change the swap partition in any way? Because if you did, its UUID probably changed, and losing the Ubuntu splash screen on start up is a symptom of when the swap partition does not mount correctly at boot time. How about posting:


free
sudo blkid -c /dev/null
cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
cat /etc/fstab

And we can see if that's maybe the issue. You could also check your menu.lst to make sure it has the "quiet" flags that Ranch Hand pointed out, because that would also cause the same behavior; but my guess would be your menu.lst is probably still OK.

Yes, I moved it too, and also made it bigger. (2x the size of RAM installed) It also was not activating on boot, so I went into my /etc/fstab and manually specified the swap partition. It mounts now, but I'm still getting the text on bootup. Everything works normally it seems... I will check on your suggestions, John. Thanks :D

[MysticGold04]

ok, heres the outputs:


total used free shared buffers free:

cached
Mem: 2064440 462144 1602296 0 4604 121564
-/+ buffers/cache: 335976 1728464
Swap: 4128696 10272 4118424
__________________________________________________ ____________________

sudo blkid -c /dev/null

/dev/sda1: UUID="ab3d8d37-b463-43c5-a2e2-bb1778d5a191" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda2: UUID="0769da00-effb-493a-835a-8b38041719c8" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda3: UUID="835286a6-b005-4088-8a56-084805201c2a" TYPE="ext3"
__________________________________________________ ____________________
cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
RESUME=UUID=2244a710-30e3-4a9d-a463-6376c9fc5580
__________________________________________________ ____________________
cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sda3 /data ext3 defaults 0 2
__________________________________________________ ____________________


I see the issue with the resume, so I'll fix that to see if that is the issue, however, the swap is being used according to System Monitor.

[caljohnsmith]

Changing the resume file is unfortunately not enough; if you change the UUID in the resume file, you also have to regenerate all your /boot/initrd images, because they are all hard-coded with the UUID in the resume file. An easier approach I think is to simply change your swap partition UUID back to what it was before, i.e. what is listed in your resume file, and that should be enough to fix the issue. How about trying:

sudo swapoff -a
sudo mkswap -U 2244a710-30e3-4a9d-a463-6376c9fc5580 /dev/sda2
And of course the resume file needs to have that original UUID too, so if you all ready changed the resume file to the new swap UUID, I would change it back. Reboot, and if all goes well you should have your Ubuntu splash screen back. Let me know how that goes.

[MysticGold04]

Yep, that worked. Thanks for your help John! :D

[caljohnsmith]

Glad to hear that worked OK; cheers and enjoy your Ubuntu install. :)