Re: Fixing errant partitions

["Ben Hutchings" <ben.hutchings@businesswebsoftware.com>]

David Baron wrote:
> Partitions, created by linux fdisk, seem to have errors (disabling 
> parted/qtparted, etc.) The table looks like this (I do not know whether it 
> made it this way--I only gave fdisk types and sizes, or other things caused 
> the errors. There were originally two fat32s plus one linux and swap on this 
> disk, made by PartionMagic--one fat32 was eliminated and the space taken for 
> several ext3 partitions made using linux fdisk):
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hdb1   *       65520       77600     6088635   83  Linux
> /dev/hdb2               1       65519    33021544+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hdb3           77600       79640     1028160   82  Linux swap
> /dev/hdb5               1       38753    19531449    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> /dev/hdb6           38753       46504     3906250+  83  Linux
> /dev/hdb7           46504       52704     3125000+  83  Linux
> /dev/hdb8           52704       56579     1953125+  83  Linux
> /dev/hdb9           56580       60455     1953125+  83  Linux
> /dev/hdb10          60455       65519     2552603   83  Linux
>
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
>
> Fdisk 'v' command complains about hdb5 and hdb6 overlap. Appears as if the 
> same is true for hdb6 and hdb7.  How do I SAFELY fixe this up?

Backup, repartition, remake filesystems and restore.

You could try shortening the partitions with parted after backing up. 
If that works then you might not need to restore.

> hdb2 is either not needed or needs to be shrunk to same size
<snip>

On the contrary, it is needed and should be kept at its current size. 
You can only have 4 partitions in the main partition table on a PC and 
you need this "extended partition" to contain the second partition table 
and all the additional partitions.

Ben.