Advice on merging partitions

Question

I have been trying to find the appropriate sub-forum for this...but most don't match..so I am just gonna post here. If a mod thinks it needs a moving...well..a mods gotta do, what a mods gotta do !
This is my disk structure
inxs ~ > fdisk
Password:
Disk /dev/sda: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3648 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000080
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1779 14289786 5 Extended
/dev/sda2 1780 2714 7510387+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2715 3648 7502355 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 1 8 64197 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9 16 64228+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 17 212 1574338+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 213 408 1574338+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 409 1061 5245191 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 1062 1714 5245191 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 1715 1779 522081 82 Linux swap / Solaris
inxs ~ >
and this is my used partitions for Arch
inxs ~ > df
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda10 5.0G 1.8G 3.0G 37% /
none 125M 0 125M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6 61M 9.8M 48M 17% /boot
/dev/sda8 1.6G 137M 1.4G 9% /var
/dev/sda2 7.2G 411M 6.4G 6% /home
inxs ~ >
So you see all even numbered drives are for Arch and odd ones were for Debian --- Yeah, it was a smartass idea I had when I created the dual boot, so that both my /boot partitions would be at the start of the hard drive thereby enabling a faster boot. Maybe its made a difference, who knows !!
I created a dual boot because I came over from Ubuntu 5.10 >> Debian Lenny >> Arch. So I had some sentimental attachment to a deb based distro and apt ;-)
Infact I used to prefer apt over pacman when I first moved to Arch - probably because I didn't know all that pacman could do.
Anyway, over time, I have realized that I boot into Debian very less and in the last few months I have booted into it ONCE -- just to update it.  and also the login manager thread has given me the idea of having different runlevels run different WM's. That way I can use fluxbox too and openbox too
So I am thinking I will get rid of it and get all the diskspace for Arch. What would be the best way to do it? Delete the debian partitions and merge them with the Arch ones? or simply whack the whole thing and install Arch all over?
The dual boot has helped me at times when the Arch kernel update screwed up the system, I could go into Debian and rectify things...but I guess I can always use a live CD for that - and those things occur once in a while

Answer 1

I want to use fluxbox and openbox on my Arch install. I read about starting different WMs on different runlevels, but I was wondering if the following in bash_profile would do the same
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
xinit /usr/bin/openbox
logout
fi
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/2 ]]; then
xinit /usr/bin/fluxbox
logout
fi
That way, if I login at tty1, openbox starts up and on tty2 fluxbox does. This gives us a max of 6 different WMs installed at the same time. Although I would rather use at least 1 tty for console. So 5 + 1
My question is will this work? I ask because I haven't installed other WM's yet, because I am still unsure if I want to mix all the config files of different WMs under the same home......maybe I will create a different user for fluxbox, but that means that I will have to configure all the apps twice in both usernames, correct?
Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-04 20:34:07)