How to resize/move extended partition to the left?

[r.osmanov]

Hi guys. I need extend an "extended" partition left to the first sectors.
Here is layout:


fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf2d9f2d9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3946 31696213+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 3947 19457 124592107+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 4122 4133 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 4134 4498 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 4499 6930 19535008+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 6931 10577 29294496 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 10578 18910 66934791 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 18911 19457 4393746 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda11 3947 4121 1405624+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 2063 MB, 2063597056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 250 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000332e4
I don't need /dev/sda1 now. So I want extend /dev/sda2 to consume full space of /dev/sda1 as well.
GParted doesn't allow to do this, or I merely omit something . How can I do it?

Regards.

[earthpigg]

boot from an ubuntu live cd and run gparted from there, if you aren't already doing that :D

[Bucky Ball]

boot from an ubuntu live cd and run gparted from there, if you aren't already doing that :D

+1

Remember, whatever patition you are trying to manipulate needs to be UNMOUNTED. That is why you can't change the Ubuntu partition itself.

[r.osmanov]

Of course, I tried it. I boot from Live CD. And I didn't find how to resize the partition.
It merely doesn't show me corresponding options.
I can do everything with partitions within the extended partition. And there is no problem to do anything with /dev/sda1. But I don't know, how can I merge them.

[Bucky Ball]

Back one up, kill the partition, stretch the other one into the free space you have created, drop your backed-up files back in the stretched partition.

[beameup]

The swap may be mounted. You have lock symbols by the drives in GParted?
Can right click on swap and hit swapoff.

[r.osmanov]

Back one up, kill the partition, stretch the other one into the free space you have created, drop your backed-up files back in the stretched partition.
Okay, I kill /dev/sda1 and thus get unallocated area. Do you mean I should drag the left side of /dev/sda2 toward unallocated area? So this is my problem. I cannot do that.

[Mka]

Use GParted to delete /dev/sda1 and, with all partitions unmounted, drag the left edge of the extended partion to the left (or select it and click Resize and insert 0MB at the left) and then drag the right edge, if necessary to the right. Apply changes and reboot.

[r.osmanov]

The swap may be mounted. You have lock symbols by the drives in GParted?
Can right click on swap and hit swapoff.
Hmm, I didn't care about it. I'll try to swap them off.
I'll return here to tell if it helped. Indeed, why did I forgot about swaps...:confused:

Thanks. And thanks to all of you, guys.

[Bucky Ball]

Okay, I kill /dev/sda1 and thus get unallocated area. Do you mean I should drag the left side of /dev/sda2 toward unallocated area? So this is my problem. I cannot do that.

You need to do it from System->Admin->Partition editor booting from a LIVE CD. The partitions need to be UNMOUNTED and if you are running Ubuntu from the hard drive it can't be unmounted.

Looks like your os is in the extended partition which is sda2. You need to unmount that and all the logical partitions in it. If you boot from CD they won't be mounted in the first place.

[r.osmanov]

Yeah, it worked perfectly! :D
It is so simple! All I needed is to swap off a couple of partitions.
Then I moved partitions to the left one-by-one freely. Everything took about 5 minutes.

Thanks a lot.

[Bucky Ball]

Good work. You can unmount any partition when you are booted from the hard drive install by right clicking EXCEPT the one Ubuntu OS is on.

[beameup]

{BeaMeUp in his best Hannibal Smith voice says} "I love it when a plan comes together" :)