Ditching the Windows partition. (solved)

[InTheWoods]

   The time has come to delete Windows from my old P3.

   I wish to get rid of the windows partition and add it to (expand) the /home partition without losing the data on the /home partition.
For some reason I was unable to download the Linuxdoc.org HOW TO for parted. The man page wasn't particularly enlightening either.

   Should I just try the gparted package from the repository or can someone give me some idea of how to proceed with parted on the command line?

[lagagnon]

"info parted" give you a very complete manual on how to use parted.
But here is what I would do:

1) make sure the windows and home partitions are unmounted
2) parted /dev/hda print (shows you your present partition table on device hda)
2) parted /dev/hda rm 1 (assuming the Win partition is /dev/hda1)
3) parted /dev/hda resize 2 1 3000 (assuming your home partition to expand is /dev/hda2 and it starts at megabyte 1 and you want it to go to megabyte 3000

It is easier to use the graphical "gparted", found on many LiveCD's, such as Slax, System Rescue CD. GParted and others. Good luck. 

[MikeCindi]

The gparted version in the VL repositories is 0.3.3 I believe whereas the latest is 0.3.4.7. Depending on what file system (i.e. ext3, reiserfs, XFS) your /home partition is formated with the VL version may not allow you to grow the partition. The latest from the gparted website (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php) will allow you to grow all that VL allows you to setup during installation. Thus getting the latest live CD would be my recommendation for you. Also as lagagnon has pointed out using the GUI makes it much easier.
HTH,
Mike

[InTheWoods]

I used lagagnon's commands to successfully delete hda4 and expand hda3.

Then I tried to update lilo with
lilo -v

lilo still shows a windows partition even though it is gone. I did not want to completely reinstall lilo as I had changed the  boot screen using this HOW TO http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2856.0

How do I make lilo see the new reality?

[rbistolfi]

Lilo -v update the changes after you edit lilo.conf. You should remove your win partition section at lilo.conf and then run lilo -v to update the changes.

[InTheWoods]

That did it! Thanks.

One final issue after the change:

parted /dev/hda print
Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0kB - 41GB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start     End      Size       Type         File system   Flags
1        32kB     600MB      600MB      primary      linux-swap
2              600MB    5001MB     4401MB     primary     reiserfs
3               5001MB  41GB       36GB       primary      reiserfs


The mount plug in on the Xfce panel shows /dev/hda2 as 4.1GB (close) and /dev/hda3 as 33.4GB. That's a discrepancy of 1.9GB when you add in the swap and MBR assuming a 40GB drive (not 41GB as reported by parted)

FDISK reports:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.8 GB, 40822161408 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4963 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

 Device Boot    Start     End    Blocks       Id   System
/dev/hda1         1          73      586341       82   Linux swap
/dev/hda2         74        608    4297387+    83   Linux
/dev/hda3         609      4963  34981537+  83   Linux

This is closer to parted's output ( i think, but I don't understand blocks)

Which do I believe and why are they different?

[lagagnon]

Which do I believe and why are they different?

The difference is probably only due to rounding in terms of a MB actually being 1048576 bytes, not 1000000. Unless specified otherwise I think fdisk uses blocks of size 1024 bytes when it reports.

[InTheWoods]

Very good.

SOLVED