Using Gparted

[bulletproofpenguin]

I just finished reading a fairly comprehensive tutorial on Gparted and tried to partition my hard drive, but every operation i tried to apply, there was some error where it could not apply the changes? I am running Linux Mint 8 and tried using a live disk of Gparted. Any help is much appreciated.

[mick55]

hi

There are rules when it comes to resizing and/or creating partitions.
For instance only 4 primary partitions are allowed,
you can't partition/resize a mounted drive and so on.
More information regarding what you were trying to accomplish would help.
So would some information about the errors.
Is this your first time partitioning?

Parted Magic is supposed to be easier to use than Gparted and it
also has more features.If you want give it a try.
http://partedmagic.com/
Remember more details will result in more answers.

Cheers
mick

[DrHu]

I am running Linux Mint 8 and tried using a live disk of Gparted

You can't alter a partition that is mounted by the OS; that is, it is already running and providing a desktop to login.

• Don't try and alter partitions directly from a running system or by using the Gparted program from the Linux mint CD, that you access from the desktop (of that running system)

If you use the gparted from a bootable CD (running it live), you can as long as that CD is the first bootable device and loads up without also starting the grub or installed OS that you might already have placed..

[bulletproofpenguin]

I first want to say thank you for the responses and advice. Now, realize I cannot use Gparted while running the OS or grub. I also realize that the drive can only have 4 primary partitions. I got all that from the tutorial i read. What I have is Linux Mint as a Primary Partition (sda1) and then an Extended Partition (containing only the swap space). When I booted from the live CD and attempted to resize the primary partition containing Mint (sda1), i got the following errors when saved to my usb:

GParted 0.3.4

Libparted 1.7.1

Move /dev/sda1 to the left and shrink it from 146.21 GiB to 29.29 GiB 00:00 ( ERROR )

calibrate /dev/sda1 00:00 ( SUCCES )

path: /dev/sda1
start: 63
end: 306616589
size: 306616527 (146.21 GiB)
calculate new size and position of /dev/sda1 00:00 ( SUCCES )

requested start: 0
requested end: 61432559
requested size: 61432560 (29.29 GiB)
new start: 63
new end: 61432559
new size: 61432497 (29.29 GiB)
check filesystem on /dev/sda1 for errors and (if possible) fix them 00:00 ( ERROR )

e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda1


The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

e2fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
e2fsck: Filesystem has unsupported feature(s) while trying to open /dev/sda1


Thanks again.

[bulletproofpenguin]

I figured it out. The version of Gparted I was using did not recognize the ext4 file system used by Linux Mint 8 and therefore could not resize it. I downloaded the newest version of Gparted and it worked perfectly fine! Thanks for the help though.