Re: Unusable free space?

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:20:36 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:12:49 -0400 (EDT), Aioanei Rares wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all, I have a HDD (the only one, in fact) with the following layout , 
>> as reported by df :
>> 
>> /dev/sda2              99G  886M   93G   1% /
>> /dev/sda1             2.0G  170M  1.8G   9% /boot
>> /dev/sda5             345G  232G   96G  71% /home
>> /dev/sda8              29G  172M   27G   1% /tmp
>> /dev/sda6              59G  5.2G   54G   9% /usr
>> /dev/sda7              20G  3.1G   17G  16% /var

I just noticed something else.  /dev/sda1 is mapped to "/boot" and
/dev/sda2 is mapped to "/".  That means that they are both primary
partitions, since an extended partition cannot be directly used.
Apparently, there is a "lurker" partition, /dev/sda3, which is not
present in the above list, which is the extended partition.  That
means that you can create a primary partition as /dev/sda4, if there
is free space outside the extended partition, or a logical
partition as /dev/sda9, if there is free space within the extended
partition.

Some partition management programs automatically
extend the extended partition to cover the new logical drive
if you try to add a new logical drive outside the existing
extended partition.  Others may require you to increase the size of the
extended partition first, then create the new logical drive within
the free space within the extended partition.  It depends on what
tools you are using.

Maybe that is the question you were trying to ask.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    <zlinuxman@wowway.com>
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