managing and mounting partitons [Solved]

[JackieRobinson]

Solved it myself

One question though, in GParted I see there is 100 gig under Extended. What is this? It's space that's unaccounted for as the other partitions make up the total size of my HD.

Also is it safe to format my windows boot partition if I no longer use windows? I'm using a laptop and I thought maybe that partition is needed to boot the laptop even if I'm not using windows.

[moonPeople]

In each itertion of a partition in Gparted. The suggested guidlines are.
boot
swap
root
home

if you do some thorough search and read in Debian docs admin you will see a call to partition var, temp, and some others.

Please sort out your own information gathering technics and understand the words:

Primary and Logical.

and what their purpose`s are in partitioning.

Gparted is learned by repetitive use. take your time while in Gparted and look and read everything in there while you are there,

do a search engine search with words of GNU Linux Gparted. or Linux Mint Gparted. or Linux Mint 'version #' partitioning. there are some good tutorials out there.

there are docs on partitioning at 'The Linux Documentation Project' tldp is used as a acronym. Though the docs are contributed by people who do not speak american english as a dialect, there education in Linux and computer science in a country that uses Linux is invaluable. Patience in reading is required for some people in america.

If you read the docs at Mint. You will come to understand that Mint is based off of Ubuntu of which is built off of Debian.

At Debian and Ubuntu there are docs that have titles of Administration that are good reads.

At the Debian Docs in Admin there is some good info on Partitioning.

When you find the works of three scribes that correlate on the same subject in the open source world, there is truth. unless the info comes from a physicist that created the monster. but then that will mutate.

Machtelt Garrels
has this to say in one of her books.

When an x86 computer is booted, the processor looks at the end of the system memory for the BIOS ( basic input / output system ) and runs it. The BIOS program is written into permanent read-only memory and is always available for use. The BIOS provides the lowest level interface to peripheral devices and controls the first step of the boot process.
The BIOS tests the system and looks for and checks peripherals, and then looks for a drive to use to boot the system.

bla bla bla

Once Linux is installed on the hard drive of a system, the BIOS looks for a 'Master Boot Record' (MBR) starting at the first sector on the first hard drive, loads its contents into memory, then passes control to it.

This MBR contains instructions on how to load GRUB using a pre-selected operating system. The MBR then loads the boot-loader, which takes over the process ( if the boot loader is installed in the MBR ).

bla bla bla

Once GRUB has received the correct instructions for the operating system to start, either from its command line or configeration file, its finds the necessary boot file and hands off control of the machine to that operating system.

In Ubuntu docs / admin there is good info on GRUB.


This info by by Machtelt Garrels is not inclusive and final. Look into the machine that you are working with and its Manufacturer docs on its BIOS. And many other BIOS docs, tutorials, blogs and various scribes to get a look at the landscape that is up to date.

when using a machine with the MS disease. A procedure of either re starting 're boot' the machine or shut down restart.
Before the machines screen has color, while the screen is black, pay attention to the screen, there will be a 15 second time period of a message on getting into the BIOS.
The message will either be, pressing the esc key and holding firmly untill the screen shows a dialog or the key sequence could be a simultaneous 'ctrl f9'. either way, to boot into a Linux disk there in the dialog will be the options of boot fom the internal HD or the CD/DVD device.

[altair4]

One question though, in GParted I see there is 100 gig under Extended. What is this? It's space that's unaccounted for as the other partitions make up the total size of my HD.

A hard disk can contain 4 Primary partitions. One of those Primary partitions can me marked as "Extended" and within that Extended partition can be many Logical partitions. An Extended partition is a way to extend the 4 primary partition limit.

It really depends on how you are setting up your system as to whether or not you need an extended partition. If this is the only OS on your system you will have the partition the OS lives in (/), swap, and maybe a separate /home partition. That's 3 primary partitions which leaves you one more. Now let's say you want to have a /Data partition and a /Backup partition. They both can't be primary since that's one more than allowed so the solution is to make the 4th Primary partition an Extended partition. Into that Extended partition you would place the /Data and /Backup logical partitions.

An Extended partition is not mountable since it's just a wrapper for the Logical partitions you create inside it.

Side note: You are free to configure your partitions anyway you'd like and in some cases you might want to create more than the customary required partitions but I would recommend against getting carried away with too many like /root, /var, /tmp, etc.. You will eventually run out of space in one of these unless you size them correctly and if you decide to multiboot many Linux OS's you will end up with an incoherent mess

[JackieRobinson]

Thanks moonPeople for your very informative and generous post. I will take your advice and read up on the suggested areas. I know it's on me to learn all this stuff, but posts like yours can be a great help Although I didn't understand why a physicist is coding open source lol.

Thank you altair4 for explaining Extended to me. To be honest I'm still a little confused as I only have one marked primary partition, the root folder. And the extended partition technically doesn't exist as there's no hard disk space left for it to exist, yet it is there in Gparted and showing as mounted. So if I understand you correctly my other partitions are within this extended partition? So it's a partition in a partition? And when it shows 600 GB of drives mounted it is in fact 500? (my hd is 500).

Thanks guys

Jackie

[altair4]

And the extended partition technically doesn't exist as there's no hard disk space left for it to exist, yet it is there in Gparted and showing as mounted.

If it's an extended partition then Gparted will show you that the partition exists but it can't show it as being mounted since there is nothing to mount.

So it's a partition in a partition?

Yes, Logical partitions reside within the Extended partition.

So if I understand you correctly my other partitions are within this extended partition?

Don't know because I don't know how your partitions are set up. Posting the output of the following command will give us more information:

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

EDIT: A better command in this case would be the output of this one:

Code: Select all

sudo parted -l

Note: the last character is a lower case L

[JackieRobinson]

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72755 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs boot
2 106MB 15.1GB 15.0GB primary ext4
4 15.1GB 133GB 118GB extended
5 15.1GB 16.1GB 999MB logical linux-swap(v1)
6 16.1GB 133GB 117GB logical ext4
3 133GB 500GB 367GB primary ext4

[altair4]

** Partitions 1, 2, and 3 are Primary Partitions.

** The 4th partition is a Primary partition that has been marked as an Extended Partition and you will note that unlike all the others it has no "File System" ( i.e., it's not ntfs, ext4, etc ..). If it has no filesystem it cannot be mounted.

** The 5th and 6th partitions are Logical partitions and they reside within the extended partition.

So I think it verifies what I originally posted:

* You can only have 4 primary partitions.
* One of the Primary partitions can be marked as an Extended partition.
* You can create many Logical partitions within that Extended partition.

An Extended partition is merely a wrapper for other partitions ( Logical ) that allows the user to create more that 4 partitions.

And when it shows 600 GB of drives mounted it is in fact 500? (my hd is 500).

You need to add up the sizes of all the primary partitions ( including the 1 Extended partition ) = .1+15+118+367 = 500 roughly.