Too many partitions after 2 failed installs

[nabbster]

Hi,

I have installed ubuntu 9.04 but the first 2 attempts failed due to a glitch with the partition size slider basically i ended up with 2 partitions to small for the updates after the install.

I googled and fixed this but I have been left with a lot of unused space. I downloaded gpart and as I am new to linux I have no idea what partitons I can format/merge.

To top it off its on a laptop with vista and a hidden vista restore partition that 'I DO NOT WANT TO MESS UP'

Can some one be kind enough to tell me how to check what to look for to determin what partitons i can delete?

I have enclosed an image of gpart

Thanks

[apmcd47]

Post the output of
dfso that we can determine which partitions are in use. I take it you have a gparted live CD to do the actual repartitioning work?

Andrew

[nabbster]

Hi no i wasn't using livecd but i will be now

here is output.

bobb@bobb-laptop:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 93950916 10099100 79079312 12% /
tmpfs 1863624 0 1863624 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1863624 224 1863400 1% /var/run
varlock 1863624 0 1863624 0% /var/lock
udev 1863624 180 1863444 1% /dev
tmpfs 1863624 1036 1862588 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1863624 2560 1861064 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-17-generic/volatile
/dev/sda7 2403388 2339720 0 100% /media/disk
/dev/sda5 98844908 1216432 92607364 2% /media/disk-1
bobb@bobb-laptop:~$

[Bartender]

I'd download and burn to disc a copy of the latest stable version of GPartedLiveCD (GPLCD) link under my sig.

Download the latest version, burn the .iso to a CD like you would an Ubuntu install download, then boot from the CD. Delete all the partitions inside the extended. If you wanted to you could even delete the extended and re-create it using all the space instead of leaving that 1GB hanging out there useless.

From there it's up to you. Simplest would be to create one big ext3 or 4 logical partition inside the extended, then install Ubuntu to that. Or you could manually set up logical partitions for /, swap, and /home, then when you boot from Ubuntu install CD you'd go into manual partition and mount each partition accordingly. That's easy to do once you've done it but confusing the first time.

[oldfred]

The gparted you show has locks (key symbol) so are you running it from inside your install. You cannot edit partitions while mounted or you cannot edit anything with the key symbol.

The df did not show which swap is used but if you are running the gparted from within ubuntu then it is sda10 which would make sense since you last install is one sda9.

Unless you want to reuse for data sda5,6,7 & 8 you can delete them all. It is best to use gparted from a liveCD to edit partitions but if you are not using them you could unmount them (key says they are mounted) and then you should be able to delete them.

[nabbster]

Thanks apart from grub messing around that went well