[Gllug] Partition numbering

[Steve Cobrin]

On Thursday 08 August 2002 19:56, Stan wrote:
> Not about linux at all (well I'm hoping a linux tool has the answer
> but otherwise).
>
> Is there anyway I can renumber partitions on a partition table without
> loosing data?

are you talking about the order of the partitions? Its possible to have hda1, 
hda2 where hda1 is physically after hda2. Linux fdisk will normally warn you 
if this is the case. You can use the expert mode to fix this, if its causing 
you problems. Or delete the partitions from fdisk (taking careful note of the 
current values) and then recreate the partitions in the order you want them 
to occur in, using the same values for start, end and blocks.

>
> I'd like to play with a few operating systems on one machine (a laptop
> so multiple disks aren't practical), they are varieties of windows so
> I don't think it's easy/possible to have them co-exist without seeing
> each other?

Windows doesn't normally like you to have two C: drives, so its normal to try 
and hide them from each other. Partition Magic is the easiest tool to do 
this, combined with BootMagic (comes free with Partition Magic). But Lilo now 
has this capability, and is generally most flexible.

I have the following in my /etc/lilo.conf hiding Windows 2000 idea of what the 
C drive is form what Windows XP wanted it to be

    other = /dev/sda1
        label = Windows-XP
        change
          partition = /dev/sda1
            activate
            set = ntfs_normal
          partition = /dev/sda2
            deactivate
            set = ntfs_hidden
          partition = /dev/sda3
            set = FAT32_lba_normal

    other = /dev/sda2
        label = Windows-2000
        change
          partition = /dev/sda1
            deactivate
            set = ntfs_hidden
          partition = /dev/sda2
            activate
            set = ntfs_normal
          partition = /dev/sda3
            set = FAT32_lba_normal

> I'd like (preferably using lilo or more likely something like fdisk)
> to make hda3 -->hda2 and hda2-->hda3 or something similar?
>
> Is this possible?  What would I use?

Lilo is yor best bet here (I'm not sure about GRUB) read up about change-rules 
and the disk option, in fact generally try and read up as much as you can 
about Lilo. 

>
> hda1 is the boot partition and runs lilo....which will then boot me
> into linux or windows...

So the machine has no MBR? normally the Physical boot record gets written to 
/dev/hda, but it is possible (I do it) to have multiple LILO boot loaders 
written to other partitions.

	-- Steve


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