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G. He
Asked: 2012-03-22 15:45:21 +0800 CST

Why did ubuntu install break out my partitions?

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I have a 750GB hard disk with Windows 7 installed. So I shrunk the C: drive to about 80 GB, created two more partitions, one for data (about 615GB), one for ubuntu (30GB) (extended partition). I ran gparted, created a 8.5 GB swap partition inside ubuntu partition, and left whatever to ubuntu root partition. So I went to install ubuntu. After a few tries, everything worked. But now, I noticed some puzzling facts. Here are the output of a few commands:

$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7              5333936   4472688    590300  89% /
udev                   4043640         4   4043636   1% /dev
tmpfs                  1621024       864   1620160   1% /run
none                      5120         0      5120   0% /run/lock
none                   4052552       200   4052352   1% /run/shm
/dev/sda4            599041020 213046820 385994200  36% /home

$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA TOSHIBA MK7559GS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 750GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  26.8GB  26.8GB  primary   fat32           hidden, lba
 2      26.8GB  105GB   78.4GB  primary   ntfs            boot
 3      105GB   137GB   31.5GB  extended
 5      105GB   114GB   8913MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 7      114GB   120GB   5549MB  logical   ext4
 8      120GB   128GB   8496MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 6      128GB   137GB   8496MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 4      137GB   750GB   613GB   primary   ntfs

In df output, / has only about 5GB, and in parted output, there are two more partions (number 6 and 8) of 8GB each. I don't remember I ever created them. What are they? Are these disk space being wasted? How can I reclaim them?

Help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

swap partitioning root installation

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Something there suggests to me that you created the partitions and picked one of the automatic options in the installer, which went on to further subdivide the space of a new partition. It's just a theory and I've no idea why there are three swaps.

    This is the second post like this I've seen recently. There's rarely a good reason to set your own partitions; let the installer handle all that, that's what it's there for.

    Personally if I'd just done this I'd boot back to the LiveCD, delete all the Linux partitions and ask the installer to just automatically install into the free space. I'd do this because installing Ubuntu takes about three seconds. Moving partitions around takes a lot longer and is much riskier.

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