partitioning

Big Switch 7: Shake your Booty

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OK, in the last post, I had moved my partitions around substantially, so we were obviously in for a few problems booting. To recap, the new layout looks like this:

  • /dev/hda1 – 20Gb – Linux main system (moved and enlarged)
  • /dev/hda2 – 100Mb – /boot partition (moved)
  • /dev/hda4 – 1 Gb – swap partition (moved)
  • /dev/hda3 – Extended partition containing
    • /dev/hda5 – 17 Gb Data partition (enlarged)
    • /dev/hda6 – 17Gb /home partition (newly created to house all the VMs)

The first problem was getting the thing to boot up. The MBR was still on the boot sector of the drive, but it was telling the computer to boot from the wrong sector. I pulled out the Mint / Ubuntu install CD and booted from that.

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Big Switch 6: Virtually there.

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OK a quick recap from my last post, where I realised that then next step was going to take some explaining … A week or so went by without incident and it was time to consider the final stage: moving Windows to a virtual machine and getting rid of the old Windows partition. Here are the main stages.

  1. Make a windows install CD from the install files on the windows partition (Thinkpads don’t have an install CD, they use an Install partition)
  2. Install vmware on Ubuntu and make a Windows Virtual Machine.
  3. Delete the old Windows and IBM Install partitions
  4. Re-arrange the remaining partitions to suit the new arrangement.

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