ScottHW
June 4th, 2009, 06:47 AM
I'm helping my brother get Ubuntu on his new MSI Wind U100. It comes with WinXP Home by default. Strangely, MSI has decided that this means that the drive needed 3 partitions from the factory;
one that appears to be some sort of recovery partition,
then a "system" C: drive,
then a "data" D: drive.
He's opted for Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR). When he originally went through the installation from a LiveUSB, he wasn't quite careful enough at the partitioning page(s). So apparently what happened is he got an extended partition (b/c of 4 partition limit), and within it he got a little space as ext3 for root and a little space for swap. Both need to be bigger.
So, in WinXP he decided to delete the D: partition and recreate it leaving ~30GB free space. The idea was to just resize the Linux partitions with this free space. But, that doesn't seem to be working.
Here's the output from fdisk -l (displayed in CODE format for clarity)
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa8971d0b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 510 4096543+ 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 511 5610 40965750 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5611 15171 76798732+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 19132 19457 2618595 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19132 19435 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 19436 19457 176683+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
And I've attached a screen cap of GParted (shows Linux partitions locked because this wasn't from the LiveUSB)
Thing is, I can't seem to resize the extended partition to include the newly free space. Even when running from a LiveUSB, sda4 and sda6 still show "locked".
I've read some old forums, and some people thought that for one reason or another, you COULD NOT resize an extended partition, IF it's "to the right" of the available space.
But some have said that they were able to use GParted to resize their extended partitions.
Anybody know the facts on this, and why?
Since there isn't any data with Ubuntu yet, there is the possibility of just blowing away the extended partition and the ext3 + swap and starting over and using the free space.
I just want to know what the deal is, for my learning as well as for others'.
one that appears to be some sort of recovery partition,
then a "system" C: drive,
then a "data" D: drive.
He's opted for Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR). When he originally went through the installation from a LiveUSB, he wasn't quite careful enough at the partitioning page(s). So apparently what happened is he got an extended partition (b/c of 4 partition limit), and within it he got a little space as ext3 for root and a little space for swap. Both need to be bigger.
So, in WinXP he decided to delete the D: partition and recreate it leaving ~30GB free space. The idea was to just resize the Linux partitions with this free space. But, that doesn't seem to be working.
Here's the output from fdisk -l (displayed in CODE format for clarity)
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa8971d0b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 510 4096543+ 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 511 5610 40965750 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5611 15171 76798732+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 19132 19457 2618595 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19132 19435 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 19436 19457 176683+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
And I've attached a screen cap of GParted (shows Linux partitions locked because this wasn't from the LiveUSB)
Thing is, I can't seem to resize the extended partition to include the newly free space. Even when running from a LiveUSB, sda4 and sda6 still show "locked".
I've read some old forums, and some people thought that for one reason or another, you COULD NOT resize an extended partition, IF it's "to the right" of the available space.
But some have said that they were able to use GParted to resize their extended partitions.
Anybody know the facts on this, and why?
Since there isn't any data with Ubuntu yet, there is the possibility of just blowing away the extended partition and the ext3 + swap and starting over and using the free space.
I just want to know what the deal is, for my learning as well as for others'.