Linux Format forums

[catgate]

Is it possible to mess about with partitioning after the installation of FC5? I seem to remember something called Partition Magic which would let you do so under Windows. I just feel the need to have some where "safe" to park things just in case I have to do a reinstall. Maybe another HDD might be the answer.
What does the committee feel?

[towy71]

qtparted or gparted are both variations of the same handy partition editor, one of which is bound to be available
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[catgate]

Speaking from the broadbased and abysmal depth of my ignorance can I ask "Would I find either of these in my FC5 installation, and if so in which directory would they be, please?"
It's a bit like learning a foreign language at present.
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Oh, sod it.

[spottedcat]

Before you try repartitioning an in-use hard drive, consider getting yourself an external usb hard drive. This is a better place to 'park' things or for archiving. Consider: the internal hard drive could fail; then you've lost everything, including what you've safely parked away.

Having said that, Gparted and Qtparted are GUI front ends for parted. Gparted is designed for Gnome and Qtparted for KDE, but I should imagine both would run under the other desktop. Both are available from the Fedora extras repository for download. If you haven't yet explored the dubious delights of YUM, I suggest you install Yum Extender (yumex), if you haven't already done so. How to do this and how to enable more repositories is all nicely explained in the Stanton Finley notes which I know you have already found. Yumex will download the *parteds for you and it also deals with updates much better than the ghastly PUP updater.

One big caveat - if you are wanting to shrink your root Fedora partition to create an extra partition you have to unmount it. Rather difficult when you are actually running Fedora. So why not download Gparted Live? Useful to have around the house anyway.

Another caveat - partition managers have been known to crash halfway through a repartitioning exercise or to trash your partition tables in ways too numerous to mention. Always archive your installation before doing anything to any of its partitions. Search these forums for ways of backing up/archiving Linux installations. I seem to recall several threads.

Which, of course, brings us back to getting an external hard drive.

Edit/afterthought: Now the bug's bitten you, why not download the ISO images for Ubuntu (Gnome desktop) and SimplyMepis (KDE desktop). Make sure you get Mepis 6. Both are available as live CDs (which can also be used for installations) and both have the appropriate *parted. Apart from being able to see how another distro looks and feels without having to install it, live CDs are invaluable for doing maintenance/repair work on your Linux installation. Knoppix is another one I keep handy. And if you need a Linux app for burning ISOs to CD/DVD, you can get K3b from the repositories. It's designed for KDE but works fine under Gnome - yumex will handle the dependencies for you.

[catgate]

I have an external HD that I put together some while ago. It has a lot of Windows stuff on it. Quite a lot of the stuff on it are things that I would like to be able to put onto my Linux machine ( eg letters *.doc, music *.mpg and pictures *.jpg) in a safe place.
Another thought that I have been playing with is that of putting in a second HDD. Presumably Linux will pick it up happily in the same way that Windows would, through the bios and IO.
It sounds to me as though I would be better forgetting about repartitioning until I know quite a bit more about the ins and outs of Linux. The thought about using Live Discs for "maintenance is intriguing. I have Ubuntu Warty, Mepis and Knoppix somewhere in my cupboard.
I have not yet delved into Stanton Finley physically yet although I have a couple of reads at him since you mentioned him earlier. I think I need to set up a link to one of his repositeries first, even before I do anything else.
Thanks again SC.

[spottedcat]

[catgate]

[catgate]

I have had a little play with Mr Finley's stuff and, as you might have expected, didn't get to far.
I updated with "yum -y update" and was quite surprised with the resulting amount of downloading that went on.
However,when I tried to go through his procedure to connect to an rpm repository I got stuck, with a message that meant not a lot to me.
I need a little more help, please.

[catgate@localhost ~]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost catgate]# rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/5/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/5/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
package freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc is already installed
[root@localhost catgate]# gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/macromedia.repo

(gedit:7283): GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed.

[Steogede]

[spottedcat]

catgate, ignore that Gnome-UI warning - so long as you get a gedit window and can edit the files. It's just gedit having a fit of the vapours. Gedit is a GUI text editor and I've found that in any distro it throws a slight wobbly if you start it from a terminal. If my memory serves me correctly you only get that particularly panicky warning with the original Fedora 5 kernel, which is known to have some issues. I'm slightly puzzled because you've done a yum update and you should have a later kernel by now. I'm in Ubuntu at the moment so I can't check this immediately, but I'll boot into Fedora later this evening and check this out and post back. In the meantime can you do:

uname -r

in a terminal and post back?

Edit: Strictly speaking it's not gedit throwing a tantrum and I'm sure steogede is quite right in his analysis, but when I got the same message I just pressed on regardless - and it all worked fine.

[spottedcat]

Ok, right. I'm in Fedora 5 now. Didn't take long did it? That's the advantage of a multi-boot.

First thing. Looking through your post again it seems that you did a yum update and, yes, there are a lot of downloads. Probably about 100-200 Mb of updated packages by now. So I am still mystified about the kernel you are running now, but more of that later. Then you retrieved an rpm from freshrpms.net, but it was already installed on your system. Can't remember without checking what that rpm does, but if Mr Finley says it's necessary then that's OK with me. But then you got the error message when attempting to open gedit, the text editor, as root. You would have got the same message whatever text file you were trying to open. This is where my puzzlement sets in.

As I said before I used to get the same message with the original kernel but pressed on regardless anyway. With my fully updated Fedora install, 'uname -r' is giving me '2.6.17-1.2157_FC5'. That's the particular Fedora kernel - the latest one - that my system is running now. More importantly, when I su to root in a terminal and invoke gedit it opens up as meek as a lamb. So I'll be very interested to know what your present kernel version is.

A couple of general points. Yum updates can be incredibly slow. They have been today. This is not the fault of yum - the Fedora servers can be very slow at times. I'm wondering if you only have a partial system update.

I mentioned yumex earlier. Don't be tempted to install and use this until you definitely have the latest kernel. I found to my cost that the latest version of yumex is not compatible with the original kernel. I did a new install on another machine recently and, trying to be clever, I thought to install yumex before doing a system update. Big mistake. I had to reinstall - no, various forum pundits, I really did have to reinstall.

A thought. Go into Applications > System Tools > Software Updater (It has a little yellow puppy as an icon). This app is a GUI which does the same job as yum update. Stanton Finley prefers the command line which is why he doesn't mention it. See which packages still need updating - I'll bet the kernel is showing. But be prepared to leave the machine for a long time if you do a full update.

Edit: Meant to add: if by chance you find yourself unable to open gedit because of this, try:

nano -w whichever file

instead of

gedit whichever file

whenever SF tells you to open a file with gedit

You have to be root to edit system files whichever text editor you use. Nano is a simple but effective non-GUI text editor which is quite up to the task, but not as user friendly as gedit. Ctrl-O to save an edited file and ctrl-X to quit. The w flag is to switch off word wrap in order to prevent spurious carriage return characters in long lines. Hopefully though, you won't need to use nano.

[catgate]

[catgate@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.15-1.2054_FC5
and that looks to be rather earlier than the figure you quote. Very odd because I updated between 6pm and 7pm today.

[nelz]

Did you reboot after updating the kernel? The kernel is just about the only part of a Linux system you cannot update without rebooting (OK, strictly speaking, you can switch kernels without rebooting, but it more hassle than a reboot).
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[spottedcat]

Yes, that's the original kernel that came on the install discs. In fact, my curiosity whetted, I've booted into one of my Fedora installations using the original kernel, the 2.6.15-1.2054 - same as what uname gave you. I tried opening gedit from a terminal as root and it did so without a murmur this time. I definitely saw the same error as you before, and I simply assumed it was a kernel issue. But now I recall that the Gnome desktop will also be updated, so I guess it may be Gnome that's getting the pip.

Whatever, nelz makes a good point. To get the updated gnome desktop running you have to at least restart the X-server, and if you do have a new kernel onboard it's best to reboot anyway. I'll still be interested to hear what the pup updater tells you after a reboot.

Don't be downhearted! It's all worthwhile. I'll comment on your question about new versions of Linux when we've got you over this little hiccup.

[catgate]

Ha Ha
[catgate@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.17-1.2157_FC5

I shall now go back for some more punishment!!
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Oh, sod it.