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GNU Parted FAQ
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Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with the no Invariant Sections, with the no Front-Cover Texts, and
with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the
file, COPYING.DOC.
CONTENTS
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1. When you resize does it always do so non-destructively?
2. What happens if you try to shrink a partition too much?
3. How should I use Parted to shrink Windows, and install GNU/Linux?
4. Is there any way to search the mailing list (bug-parted)?
ANSWERS
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1. When you resize does it always do so non-destructively?
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Yes.
2. What happens if you try to shrink a partition too much?
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Parted's resizer and partition code uses constraints. That is,
the file system resizer says what it can do (safely), and likewise
the partition code.
Action will only proceed if all constraints can be satisfied.
However, Parted tries to find the closest solution that satisfies
all constraints.
If, say, you have a partition that has 20Gb of used space on it,
and you try to shrink it to 100Mb, Parted will try to satisfy the
constraint (that the file system be able to keep all the 20Gb of
data), by finding the nearest solution. This "nearest solution" is
going to be a long way away - instead of shrinking to 100Mb, it
shrinks to 20Gb instead.
Parted silently uses the nearest solution. A solution should always
exist, becase the partition exists! So, the nearest solution might
be what you have already!!!
3. How should I use Parted to shrink Windows, and install GNU/Linux?
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With Parted, it is possible to resize your Windows partition, to
create room to install GNU/Linux. This process shouldn't result in any
damage to Windows, although we make no guarantees ;-) Note that this
is only possible if your Windows partition is either FAT16 or FAT32.
If Parted is unable to achieve what you want, then it should say so,
rather than damaging your data (again, no guarantees).
The easiest method is to use the Parted bootdisk:
(1) create and boot the Parted bootdisk. (see section 1.5 of the
documentation for instructions)
(2) start parted:
# parted
Parted will display this message:
Warning: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/hdb is 2586/240/63.
Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 7559.999M. You should check that this matches
the BIOS geometry before using this program.
You can ignore this, provided you follow step 3.
(3) have a look at your partition table:
(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/hdb: 0.000-19092.937 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 19091.953 primary FAT lba
This indicates there is a single 19 gigabyte FAT partition.
The "lba" indicates that Windows is using LBA (linear) mode. If
you don't see this, then things get much more complicated, and you
should read the Parted documentation thoroughly. If you proceed,
you may damage some data without warning. (The warning was to check
your BIOS geometry matches Parted's on startup)
(4) resize the partition to the size you want (in this example,
10Gb)
(parted) resize 1 0 10000
(5) exit parted:
(parted) quit
(6) that's it! you can reboot your computer, and start installating
GNU/Linux.
4. Is there any way to search the mailing list (bug-parted)?
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The popular search engines have indexed bug-parted, so you can probably
do it with them ("search for bug-parted and any other keywords").
