New Ubuntu User And New Installation

[PysKo]

Hello i just installed ubuntu yesterday (dual boot) and ive finally decided i wanted to wipe windows xp off my hard drive first of all i know how to delete partitions and such but then i went to g parted and saw all this crazy info (screenshot posted) im really confused and down wanna end up ruining my installation.

But what i want to do is remove my xp installation merge the empty partition with my linux partition and then rebuild the grub2 config file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as i only have 3gbs left on my partition and would like to use all of my hard drive :P

[rokytnji]

Looking at your screenshot. You installed Ubuntu to a Extended/Logical Partition. Windows XP is sitting on a Primary Partition.

GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - GENERALITIES

GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - RESIZING


You will need to run your Live CD to run Gparted Operations (for resizing Ubuntu) because Gparted running inside of Installed Ubuntu wont work because the drive (Ubuntu) is mounted

Because you installed Ubuntu to a Logical/Extended Partition instead of a Primary Partition. You may not be able to resize the Logical Partition. I may be wrong as I haven't tried this though.

[PysKo]

What im afraid of is if i remove xp my computer wont boot ubuntu, or will just get rid of everything all together

[rokytnji]

What im afraid of is if i remove xp my computer wont boot ubuntu

Open a Terminal and post output of

sudo fdisk -l

That is a lower case L after the -

and

df -h

So we can see which partition is the boot partition and see what is going on with your drive.

[PysKo]

Output of (sudo fdisk -l and df -h):


Disk /dev/sda: 40.8 GB, 40822161408 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4963 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc844c844

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3134 25172990 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3135 4964 14691329 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 3135 4881 14026752 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 4881 4964 663552 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 509 MB, 509083648 bytes
7 heads, 38 sectors/track, 3737 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 266 * 512 = 136192 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 3738 497120+ 6 FAT16
mike@Mike-Ubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 14G 9.7G 2.9G 78% /
none 497M 344K 497M 1% /dev
none 501M 704K 501M 1% /dev/shm
none 501M 196K 501M 1% /var/run
none 501M 0 501M 0% /var/lock
none 501M 0 501M 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdb1 486M 4.4M 481M 1% /media/0832-E67D

[yancek]

Are you now using Ubuntu Grub to boot both systems? I would assume so from your earlier posts.
I'd agree with rokytnji that you won't be able to resize your logical partition to include the primary on which you have windows.

If you are certain you want to remove xp, you should be able to just reformat the xp partition and create another Linux data partition. If you boot with Grub, I don't see why you would need to update Grub?

[PysKo]

i meant update as in remove the xp entry from the grub config file
and i might just reformat so i can use all 40gbs of my hd (i know its sad )

[rokytnji]

i might just reformat so i can use all 40gbs of my hd

Thats the route I would take if I was in your shoes PysKo.

First though. I would back up any files I would wish to keep from my original Ubuntu and XP install, (videos,music,pictures,wallpapers,bookmarks html file,or even copy over entire /home folder) to external USB external Hardrive or even a DVD disk.

Then I would just delete the Ubuntu and Windows xp partition (running Ubuntu live cd to do this) and swap partition also. Till all of drive shows unallocated space.

I would make a / (root) primary ext4 partition of about 7 to 8 gig for Ubuntu to give / some breathing room. 6 gig would be fine also.

Then a primary swap partiton of 700 mb (from your screenshot is where I get this swap size spec) rounding out to 1 gig might be better though.

Then the rest of drive I would make a primary Ext4 /home Partition. That way any reinstall of Ubuntu to the / partition will not effect saved data/changes in /home partition.

Then using below link

Installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - Step-by-step installation tutorial with screenshots - Softpedia

Making a /home during a install is covered in

Here's how you do a manual partitioning with /home:

in the link with screenshots during a fresh install.




Good luck with it. Happy Trails, Rok.

[PysKo]

Alright thanks for the help

[PysKo]

Sorry for the double post but i had a quick question because im coming from windows i dont understand this at all :P
but is the /home folder where all the applications are stored ? and what would happen if i bought a 2gb flash drive and reformatted it as swap would that work ?
Oh and one more thing if i bought a 2nd hd could i move my entire home folder to that drive ?