possible to merge partitions?

[josolanes]

firstly, sorry if this is in the wrong section, i didn't see a section that this would fit under very well and since i run gentoo i thought this might be a good place to put this thread :P

I have a hard drive with 3 partitions: windows xp, gentoo, linux swap.

is it possible to merge the windows partition with the linux partition (after formatting windows)? i don't mind if it'll potentially mess something up as my other option would have been to delete the windows and gentoo partitions and start from scratch with gentoo. i'm trying to go all gentoo

[budman7]

You could try using qtparted. If you don't already have it, just

emerge qtparted

With this program you can change partitions without deleting your Gentoo partition.

[jaboua]

Never heard about someone who have actually merged sucsessfully multiple partitions like that, but an option would be to format the windows partition as a linux partition and add a fstab-entry mounting it as /home or something for your personal stuff (or similar)...

Or maybe, if you havent emerged too much yet, you could try burning the whole / partition to cd('s), or preferrable DVD('s), making a linux partition, copying the files back from inside a livecd and edit your /etc/fstab to reflect the new partition-settings, thought this is riscy and I'm not certain that it will work...

Personally, I would go with either the first one or to make a pure install.

EDIT: Ok, if qtparted can merge several partitions, you should definitly try that first.

[josolanes]

hmm...it looks like i have a few options

i tried emerging qtparted and it gave me a digest something error...file size doesn't match recorded size (for one of the dependencies)?? i tried "emerge sync" but that didn't fix the problem. do you know how i might fix this?...in case the problem arises again in the future.

the other idea about burning / to cd's sounds interesting, but i'm afraid i'll probably get lost at some point. would i, essentially, burn everything onto cd's, delete the windows and gentoo partitions, create another, and copy everything back to where they were before...then change fstab like you said? that sounds simple enough, but i'm not sure i want to risk it...not that i might lose anything important, but more because i'm afraid of seeing problems arise in the future because of it when i have files that i want to save.

i'll just do a fresh install to save myself from any potential future problems .

one last question....if i wanted to use an identical copy of the next install in the future, would i follow what jaboua recommended about copying / to cd's? i think i've figured out what i want emerged in gentoo and would like a faster way to "install" it in the future if i have problems or want a fresh install

EDIT: or try qtparted, if i can get it to emerge successfully

[budman7]

You said that you received an error, did it look like this?

!!! Digest verification Failed:
!!!    /usr/portage/distfiles/xfsprogs-2.6.25.src.tar.gz
!!! Reason: Filesize does not match recorded size

I was emerging qtparted, just to see i the solution I gave you would work, and I received tis error.

[josolanes]

You said that you received an error, did it look like this?

!!! Digest verification Failed:
!!!    /usr/portage/distfiles/xfsprogs-2.6.25.src.tar.gz
!!! Reason: Filesize does not match recorded size

I was emerging qtparted, just to see i the solution I gave you would work, and I received tis error.

yep, that's the exact error i got

thanks for helping btw

[budman7]

If you have a Knoppix livecd, it has qtparted on it already.

Or you could try jaboua's suggestion, to format Windows as a /home.

[josolanes]

If you have a Knoppix livecd, it has qtparted on it already.

Or you could try jaboua's suggestion, to format Windows as a /home.

i might try formatting it as home, but is there anything else i have to do when i do that? the file ".xinitrc", for example...do i have to tell the system where it's at or would it just know? i really don't know what to do here as i've only formatted linux as one large partition...and a few times with a separate boot partition, but never with a separate /home partition. my windows partition is ~7 gigs too, is that enough for a home partition? it sounds like it to me, but just making sure

EDIT: also, do you think i could just find the source for qtparted and install/compile it myself?

[josolanes]

If you have a Knoppix livecd, it has qtparted on it already.

Or you could try jaboua's suggestion, to format Windows as a /home.

i might try formatting it as home, but is there anything else i have to do when i do that? the file ".xinitrc", for example...do i have to tell the system where it's at or would it just know? i really don't know what to do here as i've only formatted linux as one large partition...and a few times with a separate boot partition, but never with a separate /home partition. my windows partition is ~7 gigs too, is that enough for a home partition? it sounds like it to me, but just making sure

EDIT: also, do you think i could just find the source for qtparted and install/compile it myself?

i ran into a problem with this

i downloaded the source for it..."qtparted-0.4.4.tar.bz2" and did the normal thing to compile it, but ran into a problem with ./configure

i get this error:

checking for reiserfs_fs_create in -lreiserfs... no
configure: error: *** reiserfsprogs library (libreiserfs) not found

I checked and i have reiserfsprogs installed, but re-emerged it anyways to see if it fixes it, but that didn't help. i'm guessing that either this program doesn't support reiserfs or i have a problem somewhere else.

i think i'll reinstall gentoo again to avoid any problems...thanks for all of the help and suggestions . would you recommend formatting as ext3 or it doesn't matter that i used reiserfs?

[budman7]

I personally prefer reiserfs, but this is something that is personal choice.

And there are other file system types too.
jfs, xfs and others.
But I don't know what the advantages and disadvantages are for each. Reiserfs has always been good for me.