[SOLVED] Dual Boot/Swap Question

[lwpack]

Hi.

I am dual booting Vista with Ubuntu. I have been having some difficulty with it and so my partitions are a little weird. To make a long story short, the Ubuntu partition is using two swap partitions, each on a different hard drive. I would like to delete one of these but don't know how to do it without messing things up. Here are the details:

On hard drive sda there is an NTFS data partition, a linux partition which I plan on deleting, and a swap partition which I would also like to delete.

On hard drive sdb there is the Vista partition, the Ubuntu partition I want to keep, the swap partition I want to keep, and an NTFS data partition.

Currently the Ubuntu partition on sdb uses both swap partitions--the one on sda and the one on sdb. I want to delete the linux partition and swap partition of sda. How can I do this?


lwpack@lwpack-desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for lwpack:

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000554fa

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 115048 924123028+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 115049 121601 52636972+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 115049 121327 50436036 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 121328 121601 2200873+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x454ca824

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 7012 56320000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 7013 13698 53705295 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 13699 13941 1951897+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb4 13942 121602 864779264 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb5 13699 13941 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
lwpack@lwpack-desktop:~$

Many thanks.

[lwpack]

Here's my fstab file:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sdb2 :
UUID=79d71741-460f-4144-a9b9-65be78194e61 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=a71123a1-d4b3-4f7c-92ab-fe737dca5920 none swap sw 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sdb5 :
UUID=56d4c878-0b20-48b6-a89d-c9f5f2e6da9e none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/sdb4 /media/NTFS ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/Videos ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

If I delete the /dev/sda6 entry from the fstab file would it then be ok to delete the sda6 partition?

[Jonathan183]

I think the easy way to do this is ...

sudo nano /etc/fstab

and comment the line for unwanted swap

# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
#UUID=a71123a1-d4b3-4f7c-92ab-fe737dca5920 none swap sw 0 0

then shutdown and restart the system.
After that you can remove/reuse the swap partition.
Use the partition tool on the live CD to remove unwanted partitions.

Ed: after you delete Linux partitions from sda you may find the system does not boot in which case boot from the live CD and reinstall grub using

sudo grub
root (hd1,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

[lwpack]

I think the easy way to do this is ...

sudo nano /etc/fstab

and comment the line for unwanted swap

# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
#UUID=a71123a1-d4b3-4f7c-92ab-fe737dca5920 none swap sw 0 0

then shutdown and restart the system.
After that you can remove/reuse the swap partition.
Use the partition tool on the live CD to remove unwanted partitions.

Ed: after you delete Linux partitions from sda you may find the system does not boot in which case boot from the live CD and reinstall grub using

sudo grub
root (hd1,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

It worked and I didn't have to reinstall grub. Thanks for the help.

[Jonathan183]

Glad your sorted ... can you mark the thread as solved