advice on merging partitions

Inxsible · 2009-02-03 23:40:06

I have been trying to find the appropriate sub-forum for this...but most don't match..so I am just gonna post here. If a mod thinks it needs a moving...well..a mods gotta do, what a mods gotta do !

This is my disk structure

inxs ~ > fdisk
Password: 

Disk /dev/sda: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3648 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000080

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1779    14289786    5  Extended
/dev/sda2            1780        2714     7510387+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2715        3648     7502355   83  Linux
/dev/sda5               1           8       64197   83  Linux
/dev/sda6               9          16       64228+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7              17         212     1574338+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8             213         408     1574338+  83  Linux
/dev/sda9             409        1061     5245191   83  Linux
/dev/sda10           1062        1714     5245191   83  Linux
/dev/sda11           1715        1779      522081   82  Linux swap / Solaris
inxs ~ >

and this is my used partitions for Arch

inxs ~ > df
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda10            5.0G  1.8G  3.0G  37% /
none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6              61M  9.8M   48M  17% /boot
/dev/sda8             1.6G  137M  1.4G   9% /var
/dev/sda2             7.2G  411M  6.4G   6% /home
inxs ~ >

So you see all even numbered drives are for Arch and odd ones were for Debian --- Yeah, it was a smartass idea I had when I created the dual boot, so that both my /boot partitions would be at the start of the hard drive thereby enabling a faster boot. Maybe its made a difference, who knows !!

I created a dual boot because I came over from Ubuntu 5.10 >> Debian Lenny >> Arch. So I had some sentimental attachment to a deb based distro and apt ;-)
Infact I used to prefer apt over pacman when I first moved to Arch - probably because I didn't know all that pacman could do.
Anyway, over time, I have realized that I boot into Debian very less and in the last few months I have booted into it ONCE -- just to update it. and also the login manager thread has given me the idea of having different runlevels run different WM's. That way I can use fluxbox too and openbox too

So I am thinking I will get rid of it and get all the diskspace for Arch. What would be the best way to do it? Delete the debian partitions and merge them with the Arch ones? or simply whack the whole thing and install Arch all over?

The dual boot has helped me at times when the Arch kernel update screwed up the system, I could go into Debian and rectify things...but I guess I can always use a live CD for that - and those things occur once in a while

fukawi2 · 2009-02-04 00:22:06

A LiveCD like GParted should be able to do this for you... All your partitions are adjacent to each other, so it should be able to merge them... I think it will be something along the lines of:
1) Boot GParted
2) Delete the Debian partitions
3) Expand the Arch partitions to fill the empty space

Of course it quite a fragile operation, and definately do backups before hand. A UPS could be handy too.

my0pic · 2009-02-04 00:41:37

You could also just keep the dual-boot setup, mirror your current Arch install onto the Debian partitions using rsync or tar, and use that as a test system for major changes to the system or to try out new things like WM on different run levels before committing to your 'real' system.

Inxsible · 2009-02-04 07:21:46

Also installing multiple WMs would kinda mess up the home folder too much. Is it possible to have a different username at say runlevel 4?

or should I just use the bash_profile to figure out which tty I am logging in at and accordingly start a different WM using xinit and forget about runlevels altogether?

Inxsible · 2009-02-04 20:33:47

I want to use fluxbox and openbox on my Arch install. I read about starting different WMs on different runlevels, but I was wondering if the following in bash_profile would do the same

if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
  xinit /usr/bin/openbox
  logout
fi

if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/2 ]]; then
  xinit /usr/bin/fluxbox
  logout
fi

That way, if I login at tty1, openbox starts up and on tty2 fluxbox does. This gives us a max of 6 different WMs installed at the same time. Although I would rather use at least 1 tty for console. So 5 + 1

My question is will this work? I ask because I haven't installed other WM's yet, because I am still unsure if I want to mix all the config files of different WMs under the same home......maybe I will create a different user for fluxbox, but that means that I will have to configure all the apps twice in both usernames, correct?

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-04 20:34:07)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-02-03 23:40:06

advice on merging partitions

#2 2009-02-04 00:22:06

Re: advice on merging partitions

#3 2009-02-04 00:41:37

Re: advice on merging partitions

#4 2009-02-04 07:21:46

Re: advice on merging partitions

#5 2009-02-04 20:33:47

Re: advice on merging partitions

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