Arch Linux

syazhani

Member

Registered: 2007-09-05

Posts: 16

Partition question.

Hello.

I have 250 GB SATA hard disk and when I installed Arch a year ago I reserved around 100 GB for other distros which never happened since Arch is too good already.

So how do I format it like in XP (Go to Disk Management -> Right click -> Format desired partition) so I can use the precious space?

Here is my fdisk -l and df -h

$fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcdb56bc1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        4865    39078081    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80032038912 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9730 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf585f585

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        9729    78148161    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5358a9c1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1        1867    14996646   83  Linux
/dev/sdc2            1868        1991      996030   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc3            1992       20305   147107205   83  Linux

$df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1              15G  7.4G  6.0G  56% /
none                  505M     0  505M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdc3             139G  128G  3.5G  98% /home
/dev/sdb1              75G   70G  4.7G  94% /mnt/winxp
/dev/sda1              38G   34G  3.4G  91% /mnt/Games-Lair

As you can see the 100 GB doesn't even appear in df -h. Even /dev/sdc2 (swap file) doesn't.

Second question, how do I check my swap partition size? Since I forgot how much I assigned to it, if it's too much I may want to resize.

VirtualRider

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 134

Re: Partition question.

I would suggest to use "gparted" to resize your home partition to use the free space. The partition must be unmounted to do that, so maybe you want to use a live-distro of your choice for that.

Edit: gparted can show you the size of your swap too, but "top" in a console will do this as well.

Last edited by VirtualRider (2008-10-19 20:21:17)

Mektub

Member

From: Lisbon /Portugal

Registered: 2008-01-02

Posts: 647

Re: Partition question.

You can get a gparted LiveCD here: 

http://tinyurl.com/5mq9su

Mektub

---

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SiC

Member

From: Liverpool, England

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 430

Re: Partition question.

Looking at the fdisk output, it appears to me that you never actually partitioned the space, hence why df doesn't list it. df also doesn't list swap space as it's not a usable mounted filesystem in that regard.  To see how much swap space is being used / available type "free -m" and that will show you.

gparted is your best bet for recovering the space and making it usable imo.

dsr

Member

Registered: 2008-05-31

Posts: 187

Re: Partition question.

You can use GNU parted from the Arch install CD or the graphical GParted to resize certain partitions with certain types of filesystems. You can check how large your swap partition is by running GNU parted as follows:

# parted
(parted) unit GiB
(parted) p

df -h only lists mounted filesystems.