[TriLUG] Trying to free space from extended partition (that was in lvm) (fwd)

[Alan Porter]

>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1               1           6       48163+  de  Dell Utility
> /dev/sda2   *           7        1918    15358140    7  HPFS/NTFS (C: 
> WinXP)
> /dev/sda3            1919        1930       96390   83  Linux (/boot)
> /dev/sda4            1931        7296    43102395    5  Extended
> /dev/sda5            3283        7296    32242423+  8e  Linux LVM 
> /dev/sda6            1931        3282    10859877   83  Linux


Ahh, I think you're stuck.  The fourth physical parition starts at track
1931.  No amount of freeing in sda5 or sda6 is going to help you because
there is an extended partition table at the beginning of sda4.

If I were you, I'd look at backing up your filesystems (using rsync or
tar or another file-level copy tool, and not dd or another byte-level
tool).  Then partition the drive the way you really WANT it.  This will
give you a lot more flexibility in resizing everything after track 1931.
You might consider removing the Dell rescue partition while you're at it,
although I would leave sda2 intact, since it's HPFS/NTFS.  But that will
at least free up a primary partition number.  If you can get away with
using four partitions or less in total, then better.

That's probably not the answer you wanted to hear.  Other opinions?

Alan






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