No Sectors left of 120GB Drive

[Tom Diehl]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2006, oldman wrote:

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> Hello all!
>
> I was about to make a new partition on my hard drive when fdisk reported:
>
> Command (m for help): n
> Command action
>   l   logical (5 or over)
>   p   primary partition (1-4)
> l
> No free sectors available

I am sure it is correct! :-)

>
> Now I know full well there are more sectors available as I am using less
> than half of the drive!
>
> Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>
>   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
> /dev/hda2              14        4807    38507805    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hda5              14        1288    10241406   83  Linux
> /dev/hda6            1289        3200    15358108+  83  Linux
> /dev/hda7            3201        3264      514048+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/hda8            3265        4539    10241406   8e  Linux LVM
> /dev/hda9            4540        4794     2048256   8e  Linux LVM
> /dev/hda10           4795        4807      104391   83  Linux
>
> A you can see I should have 16065 cylinders but  cannot access them.  I
> am as sure as I can be that once upon a time (probably when I made the
> last 3 partitions for my Rawhide distro) that the end block for the
> extended partition (#2) was a greater number, and in fact when running
> Anaconda trying to install FC6Pre the partitioning program shows a LOT
> of free space on the drive so I figure that either I can't make new
> partitions because 8 is the limit (I don't know what the actual limit is
> but I discount this as a possibility as fdisk seems to be showing me
> that /dev/hda10 is butted up against the end of the drive) or something
> nasty has re-written my MBR to tell fdisk there's no more room.

>From what you post above there is no remaining space in the logical partition.

Your logical partition is full. Look at the table above. It says your logical
partition goes from 14-4807. If you look at the allocations you have filled all
of the space from 14-4807, so it is full.

What does the v command show??

Will it let you make another primary partition?? I cannot remember if you can have
2 extended partitions or not.

>
> So, fellows (and ladies!) My questions are:
> 	Is there a definite maximum number of partitions allowed on a drive,
> and have I reached it?

You are only allowed 4 primary partitions. You have 2. In order to have more
than 4 partitions you must make an extended partition.

Before LVM my disks routinely had 12-14 partitions. I think the limit is 16
or so. That might no longer be true since I am doing that from memory and 
that limit was during the 2.2/2.4 kernel days.

>
> 	how do I recalculate drive parameters and fix the MBR (if that is the
> problem.

I doube there is anything wrong with the MBR. If anything you have partitioned
yourself into a corner. If you can make another extended partition make one that
fills the rest of the empty space on the disk. Again though I cannot remember
if you can have more than one.

I found this in the fdisk man page:

        A DOS type partition table can describe an unlimited number of
        partitions. In sector 0 there is room  for the  description of 4
        partitions (called primary). One of these may be an extended partition;
        this is a box holding logical partitions, with descriptors found in a
        linked list of sectors,  each  preceding the corresponding logical
        partitions.  The four primary partitions, present or not, get numbers
        1-4.  Logical partitions start numbering from 5.

This seems to me to imply that you can only have 1 extended partition, in which
case you might be hosed. If you are brave you might be able to use parted to
extend the logical partition. Read the info pg (pinfo parted) carefully. I did
this a looooooong time ago and it worked but.....

> I am resisting the urge to wipe and re-install as this represents 3
> linux distros and it would likely take a month to fully recover them!

Good luck.

Regards,

-- 
Tom Diehl		tdiehl at rogueind.com		Spamtrap address mtd123 at rogueind.com