Deleting Windows Xp. Pro . partition

[Jim Cornette]

JERRY WHITMIRE wrote:
> Hi i would like to delete the partition that win xp pro is on . ntfs
> And use it for Fedora 4 test 3 .{ nondos /home }
> I have a 160gb hard drive that is setup with .
> 
> partitions      status     type    volume label   mbytes   system     usage
> 1                        a           ntfs      ---------------  
> 76293     ---------        50%      windows
> 2                      ---       nondos   ---------------      102      
> ---------            %      boot
> 3                      ---       nondos   ---------------  76222     
> ---------        50%     /home
> As you can see how it is setup. Can i do this without  having to reinstall
> Fedora 4 test 3, and updating it again. or can this be done?
> I know how to remove the windows xp. label in grub so it will not show.
> Could someone Pease help me with this ?
> THANKS

Are you saying that /home is included currently within the / partition 
and you want to make the ntfs partition (XP) into a new /home partition 
and transfer whatever is currently in /home (within the / mount) to a 
newly mounted home?

If this is the case, you could toggle the partition type of the ntfs 
partition to type 83 with fdisk as root (linux) and then run
mkfs -j /dev/<partition-that-was-ntfs>
and a new partition should be created as ext3.

Then you need to make a mount point (create a directory in which to 
temporarily mount the newly created partition), like /mnt/newhome and 
copy the contents from /home (under the / partition) to /mnt/newhome

The file permissions have to mirror the file permissions that are 
presently set in /home (in the / mountpoint).

Then you have two choices, leave the contents currently on /home (on /) 
alone (for backup, if not a lot of disk space is used) or recover disk 
space which /home used on the / mountpoint.

If you want to reclaim disk space, I would boot into runlevel 1 (single 
user and has root permissions) and remove the contents that are 
currently in the /home directory/ but leave the /home directory there. 
(make a BACKUP of /home before doing this.)

Next you would need to add an entry into /etc/fstab to mount the former 
ntfs, now ext3 with contents for the home directory in it. When you 
reboot, it should be displaying the contents as it did before, but only 
on a different partition.

Since this is the last test release before FC4 comes out and it is 
advised to start fresh with a released version instead of updating from 
a test release. I think that if this worked for you, you would be able 
to retain your current information from home on the final FC4 release.

For better answers, you might try the fedora-list, but don't mention 
that you are running FC4T3. (avoid flames). Ask how to dump XP and make 
the partition /home and transfer current information from your existing 
/home (under / mountpoint) to the new partition.

I hope this puts you in the right direction. It is not needed to 
reinstall FC4T3 and dump ntfs, but it might be simpler.

Jim

-- 
<change_m2> Will LINUX ever overtake sliced bread as the #1 achiIt would 
not be useful to have this seperate partition than to ions again. A plus 
would be that you could retain /home (old ntfs forma)


evement
             of mankind?