[linux-help] non-destructive repartition

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just bought a new machine with Linux pre-installed.

Anyhow, the standard package has a 6.4GB disk, and they offer a dual
boot option, but I insisted on Linux-only, with a 10.2GB disk. It
looks like what they did was to dd the raw disk data from a 6.4GB
disk onto my 10.2GB disk. When I run fdisk, I get:

  Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1245 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 16065*512 bytes

  Device      Boot  Start   End   Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/hda1    *        1   261  2096451    6  FAT16
  /dev/hda2           262   731  3775275    5  Extended
  /dev/hda5           262   453  1542208+  83  Linux
  /dev/hda6           454   714  2096451    6  FAT16
  /dev/hda7           715   731   136521   82  Linux Swap

df -k returns:

  Filesystem     1k-blocks      Used  Available  Use%  Mounted on
  /dev/hda5        1492311    831051     584150   59%  /
  /dev/hda1        2096160         0    2096160    0%  /dosc
  /dev/hda6        2096160       896    2095264    0%  /dosd

I think I pretty much understand this (well, except for the + in
the fdisk output, and why the "cylinders" have an odd number of
512-byte "blocks", when everything else treats blocks as 1k, and
something funky in the boot which I'll get back to). I know, for
instance, that /dev/hda5+ have to exist within an "extended"
partition; that I can add primary partitions /dev/hda3 and/or
/dev/hda4 to cover the remainder of the disk.

What I want to do is to keep /dev/hda5 as the Linux root partition,
and convert the FAT16 partitions and the remainder of the disk into
additional ext2fs partitions. (I also wouldn't mind doubling the
swap partition size, but won't sweat it if I cannot.)

But here's a couple of questions:

 1) Can I change the size of /dev/hda2 to increase it to the
    size of the disk (except /dev/hda1), without damaging the
    contents of /dev/hda5?

 2) Does lilo have to boot from a primary partition? Or does the
    boot flag in the partition table mean anything if lilo is
    installed in the MBR?

-- 
/*
 *  Tom Hull * thull@xxxxxxxxxxx * http://www.ocston.org/~thull/
 */

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