[ale] vmware decreasing hard disk size

Mon Mar 21 13:42:55 EDT 2011

No, gparted moves filesystems. It may or may not move the partitions boot
sector, but the MBR is a definite no-no. The MBR can, however, be manually
copied, so long as only the code segment and not the partition table itself
is copied. See the wikipedia article for MBR for the layout of the MBR. If
memory serves, code is the first 440 bytes of the MBR but I am not 100%
certain of that.

--
Sent from my phone... a G2 running CM7 nightlies!
On Mar 21, 2011 1:01 PM, "Narahari &apos;n&apos; Savitha" <
savithari at gmail.com> wrote:
> Superb explanation. Thank you for that.
>
> I never knew the leap from the BIOS to the hdd.
>
> Lets take this scenario.
>
> First I have only one which is 40gb in size. I install OS say Ubuntu on it
> and I realize that after the entire install and upgrade the installed size
> is only 6 gb I dont want to waste the space, so I resize the drive to have
> 10 gb and release the other 30gb for something else.
>
> I then reboot, all are happy.
>
> Then I decide to buy a 20gb drive. I then put that as the SATA2. I then
> use GPARTED to copy Parition 1 from Physical Drive 1 (the 10gb one) to the
> Physical Drive 2. All is well so far.
>
> I unmark the 10gb paritions as NON-BOOTABLE and the 20GB one as BOOTABLE.
>
> I shutdown then unplug the Physical Drive 1 out of the machine. I restart
> the computer.
>
> Now I am hosed. I have not idea but the machine does not come back.
>
> Does GPARTED not copy the MBR and other data to the Physical Drive2 from
> PhysicalDrive1, 10gb partition ?
>
> I always though that it replicates bit by bit from disk1 to disk2.
>
> Kindly correct me/ educate me here on where I missed and what I missed.
>
> Thank You
>
> -Narahari
>
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps a little bit about the boot process of a typical x86 family
>> system would be in order here.
>>
>> When an x86-based computer boots up, it's BIOS runs through a series
>> of tests to ensure that things like the processor and memory is
>> working. It then attempts to boot up; it does this by looking through
>> all boot devices in order, reading the first sector on the drive. If
>> it ends in the bytes 0x55 / 0xAA (or maybe the other way around, I
>> can't remember), then it loads the sector into memory and jumps to it.
>> That sector is responsible for the first stage of the boot process.
>> In the case of a hard disk drive, the first sector is actually the
>> master boot record, which will then find the active partition and boot
>> from it, if it has a standard program. Of course, any program can be
>> installed in the MBR or boot sector of a volume, and so as is usually
>> the case in places where software is involved... well, anything can
>> go. :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 18:56, Narahari 'n' Savitha <savithari at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Scott:
>> >
>> > I resized using gparted and not the vmware utility to do so. You got a
>> > point. I should do so.
>> >
>> > David:
>> > I did not install a boot loader on the disk. I thougt if the only os is
>> > Linux a boot loader is not needed.
>> > Can you please provide a bit clarification so I can do so ?
>> >
>> > -Narahari
>> >
>> > On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 1:16 PM, David Tomaschik <
>> david at systemoverlord.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Did you install a bootloader on the disk before expecting to be able
>> >> to boot from it?
>> >>
>> >> David
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha
>> >> <savithari at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > Friends:
>> >> >
>> >> > I have a working Ubuntu 64 bit inside Guest in a Windoze7 host env.
>> >> >
>> >> > It was originally at 40gb all working fine.
>> >> >
>> >> > I have since then resized it to 18gb (dont need 40gb) and then I
>> created
>> >> > another disk of 20 gb.
>> >> >
>> >> > I then used gparted and copied the parition from the 18gb to this
new
>> >> > disk.
>> >> >
>> >> > I marked the new disk as bootable with the flags options of gparted.
I
>> >> > removed the 18gb drive.
>> >> >
>> >> > When I connected the new drive by itself and restarted the machine,
I
>> am
>> >> > seeing blank screen.
>> >> >
>> >> > Any ideas would help.
>> >> >
>> >> > -Narahari
>> >> >
>> >> > _______________________________________________
>> >> > Ale mailing list
>> >> > Ale at ale.org
>> >> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> >> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> >> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
>> >> System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
>> >> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
>> >> http://systemoverlord.com
>> >> david at systemoverlord.com
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Ale mailing list
>> >> Ale at ale.org
>> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Ale mailing list
>> > Ale at ale.org
>> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>> >
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20110321/6782e0c9/attachment-0001.html 