1 Topic by chooch

  • chooch
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  • Registered: 2007-06-14
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Topic: Squeezing in one more OS

Hi,
I have used GParted successfully in shrinking a Windows XP Pro from 55gb to 20gb, then I created a slice for Open Solaris Developers Edition on the remaining space. Solaris has its own swap space within its slice.

Now, what I would like to do is make a little room for MenuetOS 64. I don't think that I can shrink the Solaris slice, at least not with gparted. I am not certain. What I am considering is shrinking the NTFS slice down a little more.

So if I have NTFS from 0 -20gb, Solaris from 20-55gb. The plan is to move NTFS down to about 18gb, allowing 2gb for Menuet, between 18-20gb.

I wonder if Solaris, since it was given the rest of the hdd when installed, will try to take up the space that is removed from NTFS? I am also concerned on how to get Menuet to work with grub. Right now when I boot up, I have the a grub prompt, with:
Solaris Nevada
Solaris 11
Windows

I want Menuet to show there as well.

Any advice would be appreciated.

thanx,
chooch

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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  • Registered: 2007-05-25
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Re: Squeezing in one more OS

I don't know many things about Solaris but I see no reason to modify its own partition limits. A system like Solaris is civilised enough to respect other people in the same house. It's m$ usually who likes to take all.
About grub, I think you can manually edit the configuration file of grub (I think grub.conf, in its actual place).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by chooch

  • chooch
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  • Registered: 2007-06-14
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Re: Squeezing in one more OS

Well I was successful in resizing the slice of Solaris and creating a Fat32 slice. There are a few things worth mentioning.

The current preferred way to install OpenSolaris upon a laptop, is to use the Linux Swap file system, apparently this is why resizing was done so easily. I would venture to say that if Solaris was installed natively, i.e. using UFS or ZFS or even Ext2; it would have resisted resizing.

It is also worth mentioning that if a person were to actually be utilizing the ZFS Zones feature, resizing would corrupt the slice. ( Zones is sorta like a virtual hdd, sorta). This is almost a moot point as anyone actually using Zones wouldn't need to resize their slice, they would simply run the desired OS's in their own Zone.  (Like NetApp or Virtual HDD's) Whatever.

The bottom line is this, GParted can resize a swap slice regardless of the OS running upon it.

I had chose to add on to the end of the Solaris slice instead of taking away from the Windows slice. I have not installed Menuet yet, but will update when I do. I'll probably have questions concerning Grub. lol