How to make an unallocated space "exist"?

Question

I have Ubuntu and Windows installed together. I'm going to install Arch also along with them. For now, I what them to live there all together in my computer. I have the following:

I'd like to install Arch in the unallocated space between /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3, but this space is not visible. Look:

$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda2   8:2    0  48.6G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0   3.6G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6   8:6    0 745.4G  0 part /
sdb      8:16   1  14.6G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1  14.6G  0 part 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom 

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a1bc4

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda2   *        2048   101832703    50915328    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       382826494  1953523711   785348609    5  Extended
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5      1946028032  1953523711     3747840   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       382834688  1946025983   781595648   83  Linux

So what should I do to make it visible and be able to install there Arch?

Solution

Why would you want to see unallocated space with partitions? You can see that between /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3 is a gap (look at fdisk, end sector of sda2 and start of sda3).

You can always create the Arch partition under GParted in Ubuntu. If you don't want to use Gparted, you can use fdisk:

fdisk /dev/sda

Comments

[Stark07]

Can you try creating a partition of that unallocated space through gparted?

[Incerteza]

@AshishKulkarni, how? with which file system? is it really necessary, can't I do this while the installation of Arch?

[Incerteza]

@AshishKulkarni, thanks, but I asked the three questions.

[Stark07]

askubuntu.com/questions/156994/… this is a good explanation for your issue.

[Stark07]

bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=140716 This provides some solutions. Do you have a working Linux distro ?

[Incerteza]

@AshishKulkarni, as I said, I have Ubuntu and Windows installed.

[Stark07]

let us continue this discussion in chat

[Incerteza]

@AshishKulkarni, sorry, it gets me unathenticated for some reason when I go to the chat, authentication doesn't help.

[Stark07]

No issues at all. Can you try cgdisk and check if the "Align" option does the trick? Also, can you check and tell me if the device file for sda4 exists in /dev?

[mikeserv]

Don't use any gdisk yet if you can help it - that's an mbr disk. Still, now's an excellent time to get a backup and go gpt. Although, if you didn't want to, you could, instead, remove your swap partition and do it.

[Incerteza]

@mikeserv, sorry, I don't understand what all that means. Should I attach the unallocated space to another partition and later, during the installation of arch, create a new partition again?

[mikeserv]

@enedil's right - but if Windows gives you grief its because you've got too many. Still I don't think that's a problem except at installation time.

[Incerteza]

I'm afraid I could delete my files at my current ubuntu partition.

[Incerteza]

You can always create the Arch partition under GParted in Ubuntu - how exactly? which file system should it be in?

[user2914606]

@Alex pick one. this is what Arch is about; you get to make your system exactly as you see fit. if you really want you could even just format it as anything and then overwrite it later. with all due respect, if you can't figure out how to solve this problem given the information people have given so far, you may want to consider another distribution.

[enedil]

@Alex natural choise is ext4 but you can consider something else, for example ext2 or btrfs.

[Incerteza]

thanks, but I'm asking about the exact steps. And also, should I create 2 partitions: one in ext2 for /boot and one in ext4 for the rest of the system? I'm on x64 computer.

[Incerteza]

do I also need a partition for linux-swap (do I have to create it manually)?

[Incerteza]

I actually already deleted window and formatted unallocated to ext4 by gparted. so 1) I should use Ubuntu's swap partition for Arch? 2) why shouldn't I create /home for arch? It'll be created automatically. Moreover, /home at Ubuntu is not on a separated partition, thus, I won't be able to use it somehow in Arch

[enedil]

1) yes, ubuntu and arch have the same swap which vides after every reboot. 2) in that case, you can create arch linux /home.

[Incerteza]

it turned out I had to create a partition for uefi, without it it wasn't possible to install arch.