stevewy@hotmail.com wrote:

>My choice would be to use cfdisk to first delete hda2 and
> above, then create a new hda2 using all of the available
> space.
>
> I have looked at /etc/fstab as you suggested, and my current working
> Ubuntu does not need any of the hda partitions, as it is installed
> entirely on hdb. For the avoidance of doubt here, can you give me the
> command line I will need for cfdisk (I am assuming here that this is a
> shell command) to erase the unwanted partitions on hda, leaving me
> with my existing 39Gb Windows partition and one 39Gb FAT32 partition I
> can use for my Ubuntu programs? I have looked at the man page for
> cfdisk and it is a bit puzzling...
>
> Steve

cfdisk is curses-based ... a poor-man's gui. Run it as root and
point it at your main drive (be sure none of hda is mounted):

$ sudo cfdisk /dev/hda

(It will look sorta like this

cfdisk 2.12r

Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 80060424192 bytes, 80.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 9733

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
--------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Boot Primary NTFS 35370
hda2 Primary NTFS 20020
hda3 Primary ext3 16360
hda5 Logical Linux swap / Solaris 745.17

[Bootable] [ Delete ] [ Help ] [Maximize] [ Print ] [ Quit ]
[ Type ] [ Units ] [ Write ]

Toggle bootable flag of the current partition

Navigation: up/down arrows move partition selection, left/right
arrows move operation selection.

Highlight hda5, select Delete. Repeat for hda3, then hda2.
Now select the free space and create a new primary partition
starting at the beginning of the free space and occupying all
of the space. Menus will guide you. Then set the type to
83 for linux. Finally (and most important), look at the new
arrangement...last chance!! Now select Write and cfdisk will
revise the partition table to your specifications. Then choose
Quit. You do have that backup, yes?

cfdisk has changed the partition table (only). You must format
the newly assigned space. First reboot. It's not really needed
in this particular case, but good practice after any partition
table change.

Format the fs of your choice; e.g., sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda2
Revise /etc/fstab to tell Ubuntu what you did.

Roby