Help with fdisk please (Tony)

[Tomasz Ciolek]

cfdisk has utiklity for exporting pertion tables and re-making them form
an export file... 

Why used ddfor that if the cfdiosk can do it.

regards
TMC

On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 12:37:38PM +1100, Rodney Peters wrote:
> On Thursday 28 March 2002 20:47, Tony wrote:
> 
> >Thanks for all the replies folks.
> 
> >?>Yes. ?It does appear you have the space. ?Use cfdisk if possible, it will 
> show
> >>?you the blank space you have.
> 
> >I shall have a look for cfdisk.
> 
> My practice is to use only one partitioning tool for each HDD - currently 
> that is cfdisk.  Have a look for version 2.11b or later.
> 
> As well as backing up your data (plus system ?), consider using dd to copy 
> your partition table to floppy.  That may enable you to recover from 
> screw-ups early in the procedure.
> 
> I agree with other correspondents that using cfdisk to create partitions in 
> the 2 free chunks is the safest approach.  Creating a partition(s) after cyl 
> 633 ought to be trouble free.  Creating any between cyl 255-352 will 
> re-number existing partitions, causing wrong configurations in LILO and 
> /etc/fstab.  It's not unduly difficult to get them back in order if you are 
> able to boot linux from a floppy (or CD) and have printed out the LILO 
> mini-HOWTO beforehand.
> 
> Re-sizing would not gain much.  Apart from /boot, the linux partitions may 
> well need the space currently allocated, in the the long-term.   The 
> probability is that you would end up re-partitioning from scratch unless you 
> can avoid the following catch 22:
> 
> 	Partion Magic 4.01 appears to work OK on partitions have been created 
> in windows compatibility mode (the default for cfdisk, Partion Magic, OS/2 
> fdisk, windows fdisk).  When re-sizing linux partitions that were created 
> using linux fdisk, it leaves the first cyl of each logical partition unused.  
> This will be 8 MB chunks on your translated drive.  Not what you are seeking.
> 
> 	GNU parted appears to do the opposite and separates these chunks out when 
> re-sizing a linux partition that was created using a windows-compatible fdisk 
>  Compounding the problem, it automatically turns these chunks into mini ext2 
> partitions, thereby re-numbering partitions and getting LILO and /etc/fstab 
> out of sorts.  You are then faced with a second iteration to use up the 8 M 
> chunks and (hopefully) restore the partition numbering to the boot 
> configuration.
> 
> >>
> >?>However, unless this is a laptop, you should have a think about slapping in
> >?>another drive. ?2Gb drives are way cheap, and you are living in the land of
> >?>cool electronics.
> 
> >Its a laptop, an old p133. ?Not really worth spending the $$ on a new 
> >harddrive. ?This 6gig one
> >is actually one I got cheap to upgrade the 1.4gig which was in it. 
> 
> If you have only 32 MB RAM, then cfdisk should run fine, but you would 
> probably need to resize one partition at a time if using Partition Magic.  
> Otherwise it can choke in the middle of a re-size - bye data. 
> 
> ?

-- 
Tomasz M. Ciolek	*
			* 	Everything falls under the law of change;	
<tmc at dreamcraft.com.au>	*	  Like a dream, a phantom, a bubble, a shadow,
<tmc at goldweb.com.au>	*	  like dew of flash of lightning.
			*	  You should contemplate like this. 
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