Finally getting rid of Windows (almost)

[Charles Curley]

On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 01:32:29PM -0400, James Pifer wrote:
> I've been running fedora core since fc3 in a dual boot with Windows XP.
> I'm now running fc5 and using vmware player to run Windows XP. I must
> say vmware works incredibly well on fc5. I don't boot to Windows XP very
> often and with VMWarePlayer working so well, I'm ready to make better
> use of the partition. 
> 
> My current partitions are:
> /dev/hda1   *           1        3199    25695936    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/hda2            3200        3212      104422+  83  Linux
> /dev/hda3            3213        9729    52347802+  8e  Linux LVM
> 
> So can I just blow away the hda1 partition, create a new linux
> partition, and add it to the lvm? Or will that hose the boot/grub
> process? 
> 
> Suggestions?

One concern. The reason (even aside from LVM) that /boot usually goes
into its own partition (here, I expect, hda2) is that some BIOSs have
problems accessing cylinders beyond a certain number. If your BIOS has
that problem, and your hda2 is beyond its limit, you could have a
problem.

If you are currently booting both XP and Linux from grub, then you
should be fine. If you boot to Windows' ntdetect.com, and use that to
select between Linux and XP, you may have a problem.

You could, of course, delete hda1, create a new hda1 that duplicates
your present hda2, copy the contents of hda2 into it, and adjust
grub.conf suitably. Reboot to test. Then delete the old hda2, create a
new hda2 occupying the gap between hda1 and hda3, and add it to your
existing logical volume group. parted and gparted are your friends.

N.B: Back up the whole kazoo first! Also, you may wish to use
ntfsprogs' ntfsclone to back up the NTFS partition before you toast
it.

-- 

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