Hi,
I’m going to get rid of my Windows partition
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3320620A_3QF0L3C8-part1
To do this I will use an external boot cd, and will move every else forward…
I suspect that I will need to rename the partitions in /etc/fstab by reducing their number by 1, and by editing the Grub menu too in a similar fashion.
Can any one advise if I have missed anything?
Thanks in advance.
What do you try to achieve?
When do not want the possibility to boot anymore a system residing on partition one, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (directly or via YaST > System > Bootloader) and remove the entry (a Windows one in your case).
When you want to use the space on that partition for something different use YaST > System Partitioning and let it make another file system on it and mount it on an place of your liking.
The way I interprete what you want to do is a complete reshuffle of the disk partitions, which imho involves copying of all the data involved. I would not recommend that.
The principle is fine, the practice requires very detailed knowledge of the partition numbering and naming for editing of bootloader and fstab files. But it’s do-able. If I tried it I would first back up any important data on a separate hard drive or other media. And I would tell myself in advance: “don’t be surprised if you’re soon using the repair facility from the install DVD”.
Better to do as hcvv recommends, unless you are daredevil.
Hmmm…definitely not a daredevil, but I do want to do this. There is 25GB of space that I want to use elsewhere, having an additional filesystem is not what I want.
Other than fstab, the grub configuation, of course there will be a need for an mbr…
Why didn’t I use LVM?!
Well let’s have a look at what’s there ATM. Can you reproduce the files /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst. For the latter you need root powers to read it.
Well having declared myself not to be a dare devil I went ahead.
The partition shuffling etc was all dealt with very easily, but I fell flat on my face when I expected by “SuperGrubDisk” to sort out my problems. It didn’t. As suspected the MBR was going to be my problem and as it was on partition 1, the Windows partition which I deleted, it was no more. Strangley I could not get SuperGrubDisk to sort that for me.
So into OS 11.1 DVD and tried to repair…lots of times. Although it would declare that it fixed the MBR, a reboot proved it wrong (I do have confidence in my disk btw).
So using the Recovery option, I ensured that I had an extra backup on another external disk, and I opted to re-install.
Unfortunately, both my DVD drives are playing up, and so I couldn’t install.
So I copied the iso to a convenient location and booted off the DVD, changed the install source to the iso and now problem sorted.
Except…
I’m struggling to get a connection to the repos, this has now taken a long time…however, I feel I have learned a lot more.
Anyway, thanks for the responses.
BTW this does mean now that I’m not dual booting, and don’t have windows…
