can someone explain this to me?


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screenshotfj6.png

when i installed 8.04 i made an ext3 partition forgetting ubuntu had a guided partitioner during install so it left me with a blank partition.

then i formatted it and turned it back into unallocated space with acronis disk director in windows xp. it didnt have a redistribute free space option and somehow messing with the merge tool i ****ed up the grub bootloader and had to edit the menu.lst file to redirect it back to the right file.

now gparted wont even acknowledge that i have that free unallocated space (bottom row of icons) that i want to put back into the "filesystem"

someone take away this headache please

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I can't see how your drives are configured by what you're saying.

Can you do a df -h command and paste the output please?

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Also, to see what your partitioning currently is:

sudo fdisk -l (that is a lowercase letter "L", not the number one)

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Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda6 48G 2.8G 43G 7% /

varrun 944M 100K 944M 1% /var/run

varlock 944M 0 944M 0% /var/lock

udev 944M 80K 944M 1% /dev

devshm 944M 68K 944M 1% /dev/shm

lrm 944M 43M 902M 5% /lib/modules/2.6.24-12-generic/volatile

gvfs-fuse-daemon 48G 2.8G 43G 7% /home/diego/.gvfs

Disk /dev/sda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x92ede426

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 * 26 6881 55070817 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda3 2 20023 160826715 5 Extended

/dev/sda5 2 25 192748+ 83 Linux

/dev/sda6 6882 13220 50917986 83 Linux

/dev/sda7 13221 13496 2216938+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda8 13497 20023 52428096 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x02800280

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda2 * 2614 4865 18089189+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda3 2 2613 20980890 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/hda5 2 2613 20980858+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Partition table entries are not in disk order

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You are messed up there! I don't know where to begin, exactly. Normally, partitions 1-4 are the "Primary" partitions, and you can define any of these as "Extended" to point to and contain four additional "Logical" partitions.

hda (your IDE drive) looks ok.

hda3 goes from 2-2613, and is defined as "extended"

- hda5 is your logical NTFS partition in there, and it consumes the full space

- (this could have just been a primary partition and be done with it, rather than go through all this)

hda2 is a primary partition, flagged "bootable", and is also NTFS

sda (your SATA) is seriously screwed up!

sda3 is set up as "extended" from 2-20023. ok so far

- sda5 is a logical partition in there, from 2-25, set up as EXT3

- sda1 is a primary partition, marked bootable but defined from 26-6881 inside the sda3 logical block region.

- sda6 is a logical partition, from 6882-192748, which goes from inside the extended to outside of it

- sda7 is also a logical, defined from 13221-13496 as swap. It is overlapping blocks with sda6

- sda8 is a logical partition, from 13497-20023, which falls neatly up to the end of the sda3 container, but overlaps sda6

I am wagering that what partitions you made were the wrong type/locations, and that sda is seriously screwed up.

If you can, boot as a LiveCD, and rescue any important data you have there before it is gone. Then clear the entire drive/partitioning, and start over on it.

EDIT: Here is a quick chart (not to scale)

post-36818-1207066852.png

The red sda1 has no business (to my understanding) overlapping blocks with an extended. sda1 is primary, not logical.

And you can see how sda6 breaks out of the container defined by blue sda3.

As far as what should have been there, and what went wrong, it is a mystery to me. :ermm:

Edited by markjensen
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I like the chart Mark -- way to go the extra mile!

As to where the problem started?

"turned it back into unallocated space with acronis disk director in windows xp"

"somehow messing with the merge tool"

These types of tools are rarely needed by the average or even power users. Whatever OSes your using is more than capable of handling its own partitions, be it create them, delete them, format them, even resize them etc.

hopefully you have no data on this disk that is critical.. You might be better off just blowing it all away and starting from scratch. Create whatever partitions you need with Windows, then in the unallocated space -- create whatever partitions you need using linux, etc.

Good Luck

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I like the chart Mark -- way to go the extra mile!

...

I find it much easier to quickly see problems with a simple chart than it is from the raw fdisk output. I was typing the numbers in Excel trying to wrap my head around the mess that drive was in, and looking at the output I could see it, but not as intuitively or as clear to describe with just words.

I was more concerned about my factual accuracy, as far as only xda1-4 can be Primary, especially as I saw sda1 in the middle of the extended partition. And what I was explaining was at the edge of my firsthand knowledge from playing with computers.

Finally, do you know of a simple app (in Linux, in particular) that parses the output of fdisk and can generate an image like the above? It seems with tools like LaTeX/postscript built-in, that generating a graph would be pretty trivial for someone experienced with a little bit of scripting. (alas, I lack that experience, but I might try a bit of self-learning on this if you aren't aware of a tool that already does this)

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Nope off the top not aware of such a tool, but to be honest have never had the need for it - nor looked for it. So there might be some already out there. Just have never ran across something like that.

Gparted would give you a graphic of how the disk is broken up.. But not sure what it shows if the table messed up ;)

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so i made an image of my drive, wiped the partitions and redid it

but then grub messed up......

so i said kcuf this and just completely wiped the drive and reinstalled ubuntu

problem solved...

i hope noone has this same problem cause this looks like the only solution

thank you to those who offered help

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Just out of curiosity, what does the output of sudo fdisk -l look like now?

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Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x02800280

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda2 * 2614 4865 18089189+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda3 2 2613 20980890 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/sda5 2 2613 20980858+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x816e7fa1

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 1 19318 155171803+ 83 Linux

/dev/sdb2 19319 20023 5662912+ 5 Extended

/dev/sdb5 19319 20023 5662881 82 Linux swap / Solaris

which is weird cause my xp drive is an ide drive...

so technically the linux one should be sda...correct?

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/dev/sdb2 19319 20023 5662912+ 5 Extended

/dev/sdb5 19319 20023 5662881 82 Linux swap / Solaris

should swap be using the whole extended partition?

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It looks like (if my calcs are right) that it takes up about 5.4 GB.

5662881 blocks (1k?)

1024 blocks per MB

1024 of those MB per GB

So 5662881 / 1024 / 1024 = about 5.4 GB

You can do a free -m to show free memory (including swap, which is what we are after) in MegaBytes

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total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 1887 867 1020 0 31 410

-/+ buffers/cache: 425 1462

Swap: 5530 0 5530

thanks mark

are you a linux mod?

if not you need to be

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I used to be, a few years ago.

But I have too busy of a real life with four boys, so resigned my mod-ship and have just been an active member here. :)

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Until recently, I was a Red Hatter (or Fedora). I recently switched to Ubuntu because it was easier to install on the new (no Windows) PC that I purchased.

More so than distro loyalty (which I really never got into - Linux is Linux), I really love using Fluxbox as my Window Manager. I just copied my Fedora flux setup into Ubuntu, and it all worked just fine.

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