Expand Linux into new partition

[Vernon Brown_4]

I have Fedora installed on a 4GB partition bootable with a floppy. I want to expand that into a 20 GB partition that Windows sees as the H:\ drive.
Now; I'm trying to find that partition in Linux speak so that I am sure I don't format my Windows XP which I still need to be able to use.

I'm pretty sure that Fedora is on hda1;
hda2 is checked as bootable so that should be where Windows lives; but fdisk -l marks hda3 with a c designation.

Does anyone know a good way to determine which is what ??

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 576 4354528+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 * 612 7442 51642360 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 7443 10337 21886200 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda4 577 611 264600 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 577 611 264568+ 82 Linux swap

Thanks for any help.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Not a definitive answer but:


# Linux boot......
/dev/hda1 1 576 4354528+ 83 Linux

# the next two could be set up by windows or Linux, because Linux can set up ntfs. I'd say hda2 is as you note the Windows boot partition.
/dev/hda2 * 612 7442 51642360 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 7443 10337 21886200 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

# this is set up to allow more than 4 partitions
/dev/hda4 577 611 264600 5 Extended

#Linux swap, obviously.
/dev/hda5 577 611 264568+ 82 Linux swap

You should be able to simply use the mount command under linux to mount the windows partition without erasing the data.

This can also be done with the gui disk manager.

SEP

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

By the size of blocks you can tell that the only partition that matched 20G is /dev/hda3.

Besides, /dev/hda2 is formatted with NTFS,while /dev/hda3 with FAT32-so you can boot into windows XP and check what type of file system does it use.

[Vernon Brown_4]

Thanks guys; when I boot into Windows the Control Center tells me the C drive is on the NTFS partition and the 20 GB partition is FAT.

Steven; I'll try mounting it without formatting and see what I can see. Good idea !

Vern

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

Take in mind that the ntfs partition can't be mounted without recompiling the kernel or installing the RPM that adds this ability.

[Vernon Brown_4]

Thanks; I'll keep in mind that the mounting capability must be compiled in.

[Vernon Brown_4]

Just a follow-up; Fedora can mount the 20 GB FAT partition; no problem; Linux can read and write to it; Windows XP can read and write to it.

I also mounted the hdb2 partition ( SuSE ) as /hdb2
Fedora can read and write to it Ok; not sure if the superblocks for SuSE and Fedora will stay in sync.

[Yong_7]

Hi Guys,

just want to make thread complete.

DO NOT enable write support for NTFS. It isn't finished and is potentially very dangerous.

linux NTFS support.

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html#3.5


Cheers !

YJ

[Vernon Brown_4]

Good info; I'll keep the NTFS partition read only.

Fedora sees the config below; no NTFS.

SuSE can read the Windows NTFS partition but cannot write to it. I can boot into Windows; Fedora; and SuSE. Seems to work Ok.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 4.1G 3.1G 827M 80% /
none 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda3 21G 393M 20G 2% /var/www
/dev/hdb2 37G 5.4G 31G 15% /SuSE