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RE: Repartitioning a working Linux\DOS machine.




Hi

What you want to do is possible, but dangerous and scaring,
so before you do anything make sure you can boot linux from a floppy.

run fdisk. do 'u' - change units to sectors. do 'p' to print,
and copy the output to PAPER. then remove all your partitions except the first,
(that is - the FAT one). 
Reboot to dos, run fips, partition as you wish. 
Load linux from floppy, remove the second partition (created by fips)
and recreate it at least one cylinder smaller. (This is undocumented,
but it worked for me, and you might need to make it even more smaller).
The create an extended partition, and in it create all the partitions you had
in the beginning (of course after 'u') and make sure they look EXACTLY
as before (in terms of begin,start,end and blocks). If fdisk doesn't let
you, make the second partition smaller, so the extended starts higher
and has more space for the logical ones. Then try to mount (READ-ONLY!)
your partitions from the floppy. If you succeed, you are probably done.
mkfs the new, copy your / to it, change fstab, and that's it.
If not, I don't know. check the output of 'p' looks the same. Also,
before you do anything, make a copy of your existing MBR to a file on
a floppy. (dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/mymbr count=1). And if you have problems,
restore it.
I did a variation of the above 2-3 times on my own PC.

good luck,
	didi.