[namenotfound]

I made a mistake when trying to partition my hard drive, and now I only have 4GBs of hard drive space instead of what I'm supposed to have (over 60GB)

How can I reverse the partition?

Using the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution of Linux

[Elvandil]

Enlarge the partition using gparted from Ubuntu's bootable CD.

[namenotfound]

Originally Posted by Elvandil

Enlarge the partition using gparted from Ubuntu's bootable CD.

How?

And what I mean is, it's saying I only have 4GB left out of my total hard drive space which is 80GB (it shows a max of 80 with only 4 being free).

But it used to show a max a 80 with 70 free.

So it seems that somehow I filled up most of the hard drive with nothing.

[Elvandil]

That is different. But take a look at the drive with gparted, anyway, and you may get an idea about what has happened.

Has the dricve been used before? If not, you may want to check the jumpers to be sure that a size-limiting jumper wasn't misplaced.

[RobLinux]

This is an interesting one, can you run "sudo fdisk -l" in a terminal/console window. Copy the text of the partitions here if it's not obvious to you whats wrong.

You may still have the space available, it's just in several partitons, rather than 1 for swap, and a huge parition containing most of disk. In that case you may find it simpler to make filesystems in those empty partitions, rather than grow what you have already.

[namenotfound]

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd2e1d2e1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        7876    63263938+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9554        9729     1413720    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9554        9729     1413688+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

[Elvandil]

Well, the drive isn't full. I'd start over, but since your system partition looks OK, I'm sure that someone will tell you how to re-create your swap/extended partition wihout having to reinstall the OS. Your partition table must look very unusual . Probably just using gparted and deleting those partitions and recreating them would do it.

[RobLinux]

That looks like you have from 1-7876 as /, and 9554-9729 as swap. So there's a gap.
There should be lots of space in /, you should just have everything in 1 pot.

So most likely you have created a very big file by accident somewhere if it is full. To check :

$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb5 489900 173308 316592 36% /
udev 2075820 168 2075652 1% /dev

You should see something like above a lot of free space. If you don't, find the huge file!

find . -size +100M -ls { prints out files > 100 MB in size }

If you see nothing, do same but replace '.' above to '/'.


But I think what you mean is that you wanted to install '/' into 7877-9553
and to have 1-7876 left unused. Having all Linux on the "wrong end" of the disk.

The problem with your scheme is it's best to have the later parts of disk in an extended partition, with logical partitons.

It's easy to delete the partitions, if you can make sure they're unused. But whilst I could fix this, and move '/' on the disk with just 1 reboot (freeing 1st part of disk), explaining to you how to do this safely is tough.

So if you just want make '/' smaller, you can boot the Live CD, delete the swap & extended partition, and then try the resize option. Then create a swap partiton again. If you want to move it to end of disk start over. But this time, delete all the disk partitions first.

To guide the installer, chose expert mode and for simplicity sake use some dummy place holders, something like :

sda1 Linux ext2 /boot { 80 MB, mark it as the boot partition }
sda2 { Reserved for Windows if you might want to boot it there later }
sda3 Extended - whole rest of disk
sda5 { Place Holder taking you to 70GB used}
sda6 / { 8GB, 8600 - 9599 }
sda7 swap { 2GB. 9600 - 9729 }

Don't bother formatting the unused partitions. The /boot partition is physical to fit in with PC standards.