Partition problems after installing a second Kubuntu version

[Nils Kassube]

john d. herron wrote:
> On 12/09/09 09:56, Nils Kassube wrote:
>          On 11/09/09  John Herron wrote:
> >> ... Yesterday afternoon I tried to do step  1: qtparted let me
> >> enter the change, but did not commit.
> >> Am I overlooking anything? perhaps something elementary?
> >
> > Probably you didn't unmount the partition. You may not make changes
> > to a partition which is in use and qtparted doesn't allow to do it.
> > I would suggest you do all those partition shuffling from a live CD
> > where you don't need any partitions mounted. But beware, the live
> > CD may use the swap partition anyway. You can disable the swap
> > partition with the command
> >
> > sudo swapoff -a
> >
> > in a terminal if you can't do it from qtparted
>
> Sorry I took awhile to get back.

No problem :)

> I've decided to do the partition changes gradually (i.e. not all at
> once). So yesterday, after moving some stuff to the external UBS hdd
> (a lot of win95
> non-essentials from /dev/hda1 and the remains from a very recently
> attempted
> - and botched - Kubuntu 8.04 installation into /dev/hda3), I tried to
> unmount and
> shrink /dev/hda1by some 3 GB.
> Gparted answered:
>     "The partition could not be unmounted from the following
> mountpoints: /media/hda1.
>     Most likely other partitions are also mounted on these
> mountpoints. You are advised to unmount them manually."
>
> Does this mean I should, as I proceed to rearrange things, gradually
> disable
> (and then re-enable) each partition in a terminal?

Yes, that would be one option. But you will have to disable all of the 
logical partitions within the extended partition if you want to grow the 
extended partition. That would be in conflict with your / partition if 
hda7 is your / partition. Therefore I would suggest you do all the 
partition shuffling from a LiveCD.

> By the way: I just now notice that
>     /dev/hda3 does not have an UUID assigned to it in /etc/fstab; and
>     /dev/hda7 is mounted on /; shouldn't it be mounted on /dev/hda7?

Please check if maybe the UUID for hda3 in fstab is the one from hda7. 
Use the command

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

to find out the association of UUIDs and partitions.

> The questions arise because when I did the 'botched' Kubuntu 8.04.2
> install about a month or so ago, the Live CD would not let me chose
> /dev/hda3 as mount point; it insisted on wanting / as mount point.
> But just now I notice that Feisty, on /dev/hda7, is already mounted
> there... Conflict situation?

Hmm, that's a bit strange. Maybe you now have hda7 mounted at / and hda3 
as well? Then you could see only the one that was mounted last. One more 
reason to use a LiveCD to do the partition changes.


Nils