Partitioning problem in linux

[Abarbarian]

Hope one of you braniacs out there can help me .

I partioned a drive into 4 each about 10 Gb , lets call them 1,2,3,4.
I placed Kanotix on 1 and Kanpotix Home on 4 and Mandriva on 2 .
I ran out of space on Mandriva and dceided to use G Parted to put Mandriva Home on 3 . G Parted ran for quite a while and then told me that the action could not be carried out as there was not enough space on the disk . I found this a bit puzzling .
I decided to create more space by deleting Kanotix on 1 and 4 . This done I moved the free space of 4 and added it to 1 . This made the drive 1,4,2,3. or unformatted , unformatted , Mandriva , failed Mandrive Home .
Now I tested the main Mandriva on 2 and it seemed to work just fine .So I expanded it into 3 .On 1+4 I put Mandriva Home .
So now the drive is 1 ,2 , or Mandriva Home , Mandriva .
Now that i have some time to look at this again I should have taken different steps .
Still the Mandriva seems to work ok , except that what was a 17.5 Gb install on one partition has now become , 15GB on the main 20Gb partition and 11.5GB on the 20GB Home partition .

Surely that is taking up too much space ? There must be a lot of dupicated redundant files lying around , can I delete some of them ????

Also I can not access both users accounts . I can use the main account but not the account with Boinc on it . Everytime I try to access it it tells me that I have no write access . So I can not get into the account , and I need to to do things with boinc .

So how can I gain access to this secondary account ??

 

[Urmas]

But... but... eh...

From the three you then use one
To make ten ones...
(And you know why four plus minus one
Plus ten is fourteen minus one?
'Cause addition is commutative, right.)
And so you have thirteen tens,
And you take away seven,
And that leaves five...

Well, six actually.
But the idea is the important thing.

Now go back to the hundreds place,
And you're left with two.
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves...?

Everybody get one?
Not bad for the first day!

Translation: Easier to rescue the crown jewels, wipe, repartition to you liking, reinstall... and you're back in business. Gonna take an hour or two. Sorry.

 

[Abarbarian]

How did I know you were going to say that ?

It will take me a lot longer than 1 hour to re-install though . Looks like I goofed big time .

Can I at least gain access to my secondary account ????? Surely that must be possible ??

Now that will just involve tweeaking a few permissions . Easy peasy .

Won't it .

 

[Urmas]

How did I know you were going to say that ?

Predictable c'est moi.

I'm NOT saying you can't sort this out; it's just that when you delete/merge/whatever partitions, their numbers change - for starters - and this confuses your bootloader.

Can I at least gain access to my secondary account ?????

If you're talking about saving your stuff, just boot with a liveCD or your Kanotix USB, and move the essentials to... wherever.

Now that will just involve tweeaking a few permissions . Easy peasy .

Optimist Op"ti*mist, n. [Cf. F. optimiste.]
[1913 Webster]
1. (Metaph.) One who holds the opinion that all events are
ordered for the best.
[1913 Webster]

2. One who looks on the bright side of things, or takes
hopeful views; one who experiences optimism[2]; -- opposed
to pessimist.
[1913 Webster]

-- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

 

[Abarbarian]

Hmm and I thought that being a viking I could solve any problem with me trusty axe .

I see the partitioning numbering would be a problem .

Can you suggest how to partition me 40 GB hard drive for use with Mandriva only ?? I reconed 15GB for main partition , 15GB for home and possibly 10 Gb for temp . Or 15 GB for main and 25 G for home .All ideas welcome .

Linux is fun and funky . The more I learn the more I like it .

 

[Urmas]

Can you suggest how to partition me 40 GB hard drive for use with Mandriva only ??

2x(amount of RAM) for swap, 10GB for "/" (aka root/main) and the rest for "/home". Or... if you plan to install a... shipload of programs, increase "/" from 10 to 15GB.

Linux is fun and funky

Very much so... and addictive. Be warned.

 

[Abarbarian]

I got 4 GB of ram and will be using 64 Bit Mandriva , will I need a swap space ????

Just downloaded Slax Live cd to see if it will run on a friends ancient pc .

It is addictive ,I ain't had more than half an hour of gaming since I started playing with linux .

 

[Urmas]

4 gb ram swap

I got 4 GB of ram and will be using 64 Bit Mandriva , will I need a swap space ????

Memory galore, huh? I'd still make a swap partition... a two-gig one should do fine.

 

[Abarbarian]

Yup got lots of memory ,

 

[23dornot23d]

Hi - just spotted that you were having partition problems - mine worked ok with my laptop, but not with my desktop.
(does not like sata drive layout for some reason - to get your partitions and a grub boot back -
Elive 0.6.9 does the work for me - recovered my SATA drive layout and added the grub boot menu for 3 different linux systems - that were set up on there ...... in different partitions .....
Elive - Kanotix - Freespire run on my Desktop computer)

But heres the partition table for the laptop - the last 3 partitions are for mandriva - if you double them up you will be ok
It might be useful -
Mine is a 40 gig drive first 25 gig windows XP - C and D drives ...... ok just a quick reply .....
sorry about double posts before the computer was saying that there was a problem connecting - I did not think either of the last posts on thorhammer had been sent ...... bye for now ....

The unknown - is the swap space - Mandriva used the swap space on my usb drive instead of the main drive for some unknown reason ...... 512 k is usually ok ..... load superkaramba up and watch how much it gets used with sinc_EN .....

 

[Abarbarian]

Thanks folks . Divided me drive into , 15 GB main , 23 GB Home and 2 GB Swap .