Partition Table Help - Cannot have overlapping partitions

[TheRussMan]

Hi

I'm trying to increase the size of my ubuntu partition. To do this I shrunk my windows partition using partitionmanager and then booted into an ubuntu livecd and tried to use gparted to add the unallocated space to my ubuntu partition. Gparted showed my drive as unallocated and after some research I think this is because I have overlapping partitions.

sudo fdisk -l
Error: Cannot have overlapping partitions.

sudo sfdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 14593 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 7030- 7031- 56473168+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,239,63)
/dev/sda2 11548+ 14592- 3045- 24456713 5 Extended
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,236,27)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,239,63)
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda5 11548+ 14461- 2914- 23401472 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 14461+ 14593- 132- 1056768 82 Linux swap / Solaris

sudo sfdisk -d
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start= 63, size=112946337, Id= 7, bootable
/dev/sda2 : start=185522174, size= 48913426, Id= 5
/dev/sda3 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/sda4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/sda5 : start=185522176, size= 46802944, Id=83
/dev/sda6 : start=232327168, size= 2113536, Id=82


sda1 currently has windows (i'm in the process of getting rid of it, but needed more space on my ubuntu one first to copy things across)
sda5 is Ubuntu

How do I go about resolving the overlapping partitions so I can use gparted to resize sda5 and also do I need sda1 to be bootable, I believe that grub is on sda5, so can I make that bootable instead ready for when I finally remove sda1?

Thanks

[TheRussMan]

Bump.

I don't suppose anyone can help?

[srs5694]

I don't see anything wrong with those partitions; however, it's very difficult to parse because you posted it without using [code] and [/code] tags before and after the output. This corrupts the columnar output of these programs. Also, one critical piece of data is missing: The size of the disk in sectors. (The size in cylinders isn't precise enough.)

Usually, fdisk will display disk data even if it detects corruption, so the refusal to do so in your case is puzzling. I have a sneaking suspicion you may be using GNU fdisk, which is based on libparted, which tends to be very fussy and inflexible about such things. I recommend you remove the gnu-fdisk package, ensure that the util-linux package is installed, and try again, but this type use "sudo fdisk -lu" and be sure to use the [code] and [/code] tags.

Also, you may want to check this Web page that I wrote about such problems. I don't see evidence of the specific problem described on the Web page in your output, but the data are incomplete. "sudo fdisk -lu" using the fdisk from util-linux should produce the required output.

[Quackers]

Which Windows version are you using?

[TheRussMan]

Hi, you're quite right about the gnu-fdisk and now I've removed it I get following output:

 

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15505 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x64656469

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   112946399    56473168+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2       185522174   234435599    24456713    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       185522176   232325119    23401472   83  Linux
/dev/sda6       232327168   234440703     1056768   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Thanks for the assistance so far.


And @Quackers I'm using Windows XP.

[Quackers]

One question that occurs to me from your last post. Does your extended partition include sda2 and sda5? If so, why don't they start on the same sector? Maybe they shouldn't, I'm not really sure.

[TheRussMan]

One question that occurs to me from your last post. Does your extended partition include sda2 and sda5? If so, why don't they start on the same sector? Maybe they shouldn't, I'm not really sure.

Hmm, that might be right because if you look at the cylinders the extended partition starts on the same value as sda5. Although I assume it should end with the same value as sda6 as sda2 included sda5 and sda6. Do you know where I could check?

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15505 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x64656469

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        7470    56473168+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           12270       15505    24456713    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           12270       15366    23401472   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           15366       15506     1056768   82  Linux swap / Solaris

[Quackers]

I'm really not sure, I'm afraid.
Can you post a screenshot of what Gparted shows for the partition structure?

[TheRussMan]

I'm really not sure, I'm afraid.
Can you post a screenshot of what Gparted shows for the partition structure?

Here we go, but as you can see it doesn't show anything because of the overlapping partitions.

[Quackers]

Oh, I see. I'm sorry I wasted your time there. You already said that - my bad.
Try downloading and running the boot info script from this link and posts the results in code tags, as before.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1291280

We could do with srs5694 coming back. He knows his stuff.