[CLUE-Tech] Partitioning/Formatting newbie question.

[Michael Robbert]

David Anselmi wrote:

>> I also ran 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' and received the
>> following:
>>
>>    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id System
>> /dev/hda1   *         1        33    265041   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda2            34      1053   8193150   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda3          1054      1563   4096575   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda4          1564      2434   6996307+   f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
>> /dev/hda5          1564      1628    522081   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda6          1629      1693    522081   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda7          1694      1742    393561   83 Linux
>> /dev/hda8          1743      1754     96358+  82 Linux swap
>
>
> Looks like you had it right at one point.  The Id column is the type 
> of partition (83 for Linux, 82 for swap, f for Win 95).  It says Win 
> 95 because that's the type that's marked in the partition table.  It 
> doesn't have anything to do with what's actually in the partition.
>
> Try using fdisk to delete hda4.  Then recreate it as an extended 
> partition and use the same start and end.  You probably want to record 
> the output of fdisk -lu /dev/hda.  That will show you start and end in 
> sectors.  Then when you run fdisk /dev/hda, type u to change units to 
> sectors.

Wooah! If you delete hda4 you lose 5-8. It is Win95 Ext'd, which is the 
extended partition. You can see that the blocks continue right past the 
following ones. A standard Win95 partition would be b, c, or e.  The 
rest of your instructions were fine though. Create a new partition in 
blocks 1755-2434. I don't know if Red Hat 7.0 has parted, but if it does 
you may want to check that out as an alternative to fdisk.
Once that is created and you've rebooted you'll need to make a file 
system on the new partition. Use "man mkfs" to find out how.

Good Luck,
Mike Robbert