[BRLTTY] partition table - too many swap partitions and how big should extended partition be?

[Jason White]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 08:19:28PM +1000, Daniel Dalton wrote:
> I have about 4 different swap partitions on my hard drive due to the 4 
> reinstalls I did.
> So how can I find out and do the following:
> - Work out what swap partition linux actually uses so I don't delete the 
> one it needs

Mount (or reading /etc/mtab) should show you which partition is being used for
swap.
> - Delete the unneeded swap partitions

Use fdisk or parted from the command line, very, very carefully Deleting the
wrong one would be disastrous.

You could always delete them all and, if you're running Debian, install the
swapspace package which will dynamically create, resize and remove swap files
in your current file system. This way, you don't need a swap partition, but
your machine will still have the benefit of swap, which will help to keep it
performing properly.

Since this is a general Linux question, and not an accessibility or
braille-related, question, you might get more responses by subscribing to a
Linux user's group or similar forum and asking such questions there.

The command to resize your Linux file system depends on which file system you
chose during installation.
If you're using ext3, which is most likely, there is a command to resize the
file system which I would have to go and look up (I use the XFS file system
myself, rather than ext3, and thus I don't have the ext3 tools installed
here).