installing 5.0 on ntfs partition using qtparted?

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, I just broke down and got myself a new linux box (Dell Dimension 310 with PIV 3Ghz, 1GB RAM, 1280x1024 flat panel and 160GB hdd). The problem is its an XP box right now and I want to install a dual boot on the hdd with the KNOPPIX 5.0.1CD.

Well, I booted the CD and ran qtparted and found the following partitions (info from df in root shell):
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 2471 25 2446 2% /
/ramdisk 809556 6340 803216 1% /ramdisk
/UNIONFS 2801220 1998004 803216 72% /UNIONFS
/dev/hda 712926 712926 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 1991664 1991664 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/dev/sda1 40034 7852 32182 20% /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 113860684 8084728 105775956 8% /media/sda2
/dev/sda3 38210600 67208 38143392 1% /media/sda3
/dev/sda4 4128652 3892716 235936 95% /media/sda4


Wow, now that's weird. I usually find FAT32 installed on one partition with maybe one rescue partition. Here we have a rescue partition in sda1 with FAT16 39MB, a primary partition sda2 with ntfs 108GB, some kind of backup partition sda3 with ntfs 36GB and a restore partition sda4 with FAT32 3.9GB. Also, the primary hdd is usually hda1 and the cdrom drive is usually sda, but here its reversed!

Can I just resize sda2 as I would normally (hda2 with FAT32)? In other words, can qtparted handle resizing ntfs?

TIA,
AJG

[ockham23]

AJG, gparted is a much better choice. You can either download the gparted LiveCD or get the latest Kanotix LiveCD (Kanotix-2006-01-RC4) that includes not only gparted but also additional useful tools such ntfs-3g.

Re-partitioning your drive may be somewhat difficult because it looks like it holds four primary partitions. Please post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

so I can take a closer look at it.

[malaire]

Can I just resize sda2 as I would normally (hda2 with FAT32)? In other words, can qtparted handle resizing ntfs?

I don't know about qtparted, but GParted LiveCD (~30MB) can resize NTFS partitions.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Wow, guys, thanx for all the input!

OK, I'm not on that box right now so I'll send you the fdisk -l output from the root shell later.

In the meantime, I just have a question about gparted: gparted comes as its own liveCD and as a utility on the latest KANOTIX liveCD? Well, maybe I should just burn the KANOTIX liveCD and install from there? Also, gparted is safe for resizing ntfs partitions and qtparted is not?

BTW, there are 4 partitions, but only sda2 is active (ie: it boots from there).

Regards,
AJG

[ockham23]

Kanotix includes the latest version of gparted:

einfach@D1607:~$ apt-cache policy gparted
gparted:
  Installed: 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1
  Candidate: 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1
  Version table:
 *** 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1 0
        500 http://kanotix.com sid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.2.5-2 0
        500 http://ftp.de.debian.org unstable/main Packages
        200 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main Packages

You can resize NTFS partitions safely, but you first have to run a windows defragmentation tool.

By the way, Kanotix also includes kernel 2.6.18 and compiz.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, here's the sudo fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 14180 113860687+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 14181 18937 38210602+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 18938 19452 4136737+ db CP/M / CTOS / ...

OK, so qtparted is not safe on ntfs? There's nothing like gparted on the KNOPPIX 5.0 CD I guess. BTW, this is a newly installed wimpdoze box straight out of the Dell factory, so defrag is likely unnecessary.

Regards,
AJG

[ockham23]

AJG, gparted is the right kind of tool for this, and defragmentation is a necessary precaution.

But the current partition layout is really unfavorable as there are already four primary partitions. If you were to shrink sda2, the only way to create another partition would be to convert sda2 into an extended partition holding two logical drives sda5 and sda6. This isn't advisable, though, because Windows requires an active primary partition for its bootloader.

What about "resizing" sda3 instead? There's no bootflag, so you could convert it into an extended partition and create several logical drives within it. Even better, you could do the re-partitioning with windows disk manager:
1. Delete primary partition sda3.
2. Create new extended partition sda3 in it's place.
3. Create several logical drives within sda3 and format them with FAT32.
4. Boot computer off the Knoppix LiveCD and re-format future root partition with qtparted (ext2).
5. Run rebuildfstab and install Knoppix.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, I've used qtparted to resize the active windows partition in wierd cases similar to this.

My new computer science classroom/lab at school had 2 wimpdoze partitions on each of the 25 Dell PCs. In this case, however, hda2 was a FAT16 win95 rescue partition and hda1 was the active winXP FAT32 partiton. I simply used qtparted to resize the FAT32 partition from 40GB to 20GB. Then, from the freed up hdd space, I made hda3 an ext2 partition with about 19.5GB and and hda4 with 512MB for a linuxswap.

I thought I could something similar here, the only catch being the ntfs file format....

BTW, I haven't used any wimpdoze utilities in over 10 years now so I wouldn't know where to start with that. Like I tell my students: "I don't do windows! Its too messy, they don't pay me enough, I always leave streaks and suds...."

Anyway, personally I would do exactly as you say as I don't care one bit about the wimpdoze partition. However, my better half has to use winXP. Also, this is a brand new Dell under warranty with all these new bells and whistles for diagnosing problems remotely from the Dell online resource center, so I can't just kill what's in sda3/sda4....

If I simply resize sda2 could I create an sda5 partition for KNOPPIX or KANOTIX to boot from grub? Also, is it sda because its a SATA drive? What's special about SATA? Is there a problem with SATA and KNOPPIX I should know about?

Frustrated,
AJG

[ockham23]

AJG, you cannot simply create another partition because there are already four primary partitions, which is the limit for IBM compatible systems. You also cannot simply "convert" sda2 into an extended partition with two logical drives because Windows needs to start from a bootable primary partition. That's why I suggested to delete sda3 instead and use the freed up space to create an extended partition that you can then populate with as many logical drives as you like.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, OK, I get it! So, I'll destroy sda3 and sda4, resize sda2 and recreate sda3 as ext2 and sda4 as swap.

I guess we'll have to live without the wimpdoze rescue junk.... I can live without that, but I can't live without linux on my PC!

Sounds like a plan?

Thanx for your help,
AJG