re-creating boot partition

[shumi12321]

I was installing winXP on my F10 machine, so i had to delete boot partition.

I set up XP successfully (it was not easy), but have the problem with recreating boot partition.

When I try to create new partition in rescue mode with fdisk, i get an error "No free sectors available".

Here is my partition list from fdisk:

Device		Boot	Start	End		Blocks	Id	System
/dev/sda1		14	7662	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda2		7663	16634	...		5	Extended
/dev/sda3		9321	9396	...		82	Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4	*	18179	20023	...		7	HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5		7663	9320	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda6		9397	11487	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda7		11488	11997	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda8		11998	12397	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda9		12380	12634	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda10		12635	12685	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda11		12686	13153	...		83	Linux
/dev/sda12		13154	16634	...		83	Linux

[Rubberman]

Windows will take up all the space on the disc unless you tell it otherwise. You will have to reinstall WIndows, and tell it not to take all the disc. Then you will need to reinstall the linux boot partition, grub, etc.

[shumi12321]

Are you sure that winXP will take up even the space on which was boot partition, since boot partition was 1st on drive, and NTFS was last one?

[Rubberman]

Start a rescue disc and execute the command: fdisk -l
Then post the results here. Thanks.

[shumi12321]

Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id	System
/dev/sda1		14	7662	61440592+	83	Linux
/dev/sda2		7663	16634	72067590	5	Extended
/dev/sda3		9321	9396	610470		82	Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4	*	18179	20023	10482412+	7	HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5		7663	9320	13317822	83	Linux
/dev/sda6		9397	11487	16795926	83	Linux
/dev/sda7		11488	11997	4096543+	83	Linux
/dev/sda8		11998	12397	3068383+	83	Linux
/dev/sda9		12380	12634	2048256		83	Linux
/dev/sda10		12635	12685	409626		83	Linux
/dev/sda11		12686	13153	3759178+	83	Linux
/dev/sda12		13154	16634	27961101	83	Linux

Before installing XP, NTFS was last partition (/dev/sda13), and boot was /dev/sda1(Start@1; End@13 if my memory is good).
HD is Seagate 160GB

[Rubberman]

Windows only recognizes a 4 partition boot record, one of which can be an extended partition containing more sub-partitions. All the partitions > 4 should be actually contained in the extended partition (2). Partition 1 should be /boot, 2 points to 5+, 3 is your LInux swap partition, and 4 is the Windows XP partition. You need to tell grub that partition 1 is /boot.

[shumi12321]

As much as I can remember, there were 4 pimary partitions in total before installing WinXP:
1. boot (ex /dev/sda1)
2. /nova (ex-NTFS partition that I converted to ext3 with gparted) (ex /dev/sda2, now /dev/sda1)
3./swap+ /home+/usr+/filePart+... (ex /dev/sda3, now /dev/sda2)
4. NTFS partition (ex /dev/sda12, now /dev/sda4)
(not even gparted didn't allow me to create more than 4 primary partitions)

If that seems to be the problem, ist there a way to resize primary partition /dev/sda2 so that it contains partition /dev/sda1 as logical volume?

[Rubberman]

Why do you want to do that? In any case, I'm not sure you can without nuking the contents of /dev/sda1. Actually, from the position of /dev/sda3 (swap), it appears to be in the extended partition set already since it is located at cylinders 9321-9396 and the extended partition is at 7663-16634.There does seem to be some space between 16634 and 18179 where the NTFS partition starts - about 1500 cylinders. You could "extend" /dev/sda2 to encompass that area as well so it could be used. Again, use gparted or the command-line version parted to do that.

[rcgreen]

There seems to be more than one weird thing about this
arrangement. First

/dev/sda1 14 7662 ... 83 Linux

Your first partition starts at cyl 14. Who knows what that space is
being used for, maybe wasted.

/dev/sda2 7663 16634 ... 5 Extended

/dev/sda4 * 18179 20023 ... 7 HPFS/NTFS

As already mentioned, there are more unallocated cyls between
sda2 and sda4.

/dev/sda8 11998 12397 ... 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 12380 12634 ... 83 Linux

sda8 and sda9 overlap, violating each other's space. You
will get data corruption here.

Is this system failing to boot?

[Rubberman]

sda8 and sda9 overlap, violating each other's space. You
will get data corruption here.

Is this system failing to boot?

I missed that. Indeed, this drive configuration seems pretty frelled to me. The best bet might be to backup any data possible to an external drive with a rescue disc, then wipe the drive altogether, reinstall Windows, then reinstall Linux, and finally restore the backed up data.