[Tfug] gparted problem

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Earl,

> >> I have a hard drive that I used for testing some distributions.  
> >> As some distros have some very strong ideas about partitioning
> >> the final partitioning looks like this:
> >>
> >> | sda1   |  sda5         | sda2            |  sda3   |
> >> | boot   |  Ubuntu 9.10  | Ubuntu 8.02     |  Swap   |
> >
> > Is this *physically* how the partitions are laid out?
> > I.e., are you sure that the first sector of sda2 is
> > "physically" adjacent to the last sector in sda5
> 
> Shorter answer ... Yes.
> 
> Long answer ... Yes, because:
> sda1 sectors 63-417869

sda1 ends *inside* sda4/5??

> sda4 sectors 417690-39070079
> sda5 sectors 417753-39070079

why does sda4 encompass sda5?

> unallocated sectors 39070080-73882934

These are (were) sda2?

> sda3 sectors 73882435-73882934
> 
> >> Of course, sda5 is in sda4.

Why "of course"?  (recall, I don't run any of your distros  :-/ )

> >> I cleared sda2 which is now unallocated.  I tried to
> >> expand sda5 into the space formerally occupied by sda2.
> >> gparted is unable to do this.  Does
> >> anyone know if this is because sda5 is a logical partition
> >> and sda2 was a primary partition?

Ah, because sda4 constrains sda5 (?)