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I am using Ubuntu 14.10, when I installed it, I decided to use the recommended option "automatically use entire disk for Ubuntu", this was OK for me 'cause I just use GNU/Linux, after some months without any problem today I got a message from an application that I ran out of RAM, I thought it was a mistake so I decided to check my HDD with gparted and I got these surprises: 1. I do not have SWAP partition 2. /home is in the same "/" partition

Here is how my HDD partitions look pic of my HDD partitions

So, my questions are: 1. Canonical has decide to not use Swap partition anymore? why? it is not necessary anymore?

  1. it is safety to resize my / partition to create a Swap and a /home partition? do you suggest me to use knoppix or another live distro?

  2. why do I have a fat32 and an unknown partition? what are the purposes? should I eliminate them?

All the best

user219416
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  • The fat32 is needed for UEFI, which is the updated version of BIOS. Don't delete it. If you do the computer won't boot. It looks like somehow your swap partition /dev/sda3 was corrupted. See http://askubuntu.com/questions/332524/creating-a-swap-file-or-swap-partition-on-the-ssd-hdd – user68186 Jan 22 '15 at 22:11
  • Also see http://askubuntu.com/questions/353683/uefi-partitioning-for-dummies for why you need the fat32 partition. – user68186 Jan 22 '15 at 22:18
  • Yes, this looks like swap was on sda3 and it got corrupted, you have to create it anew. How do I add a swap partition after system installation? – LiveWireBT Jan 23 '15 at 10:44
  • "it is safety to resize my / partition to create a Swap and a /home partition? " nowadays you can install and keep your currrent /home even when not on its own partition. – Rinzwind Jan 28 '15 at 10:18

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KEEP AWAY FROM SDA1 (FAT32)!!!
This is where your EFI boot loader is installed. You will have trouble after wiping it!

Usually the default installation option should give you a "/" partition and a "swap" partition (on UEFI systems also that additional boot partition). According to this, I assume, that this "unknown" partition /dev/sda3 used to be your swap, as the size would fit as well, until something strange happened. (Aliens? Who knows... ;D) Anyway, it is neither recognized nor mounted and Ubuntu is your only OS on that machine, so it should be safe to delete it. Then you can allocate the freed space to a brand new swap partition! You will have to edit the fstab config file to have Ubuntu mount and use it automatically. (details here)

You can resize your "/" partition, but shrinking is only possible when it is unmounted. Therefore you have to boot Ubuntu/any other distro from a live-cd/usb. Run gParted from there and resize it as you want, depending on how much free space is left inside the partition. Be aware that modifying partitions always may lead to loss of data, so I recommend you to do a BACKUP first! The new unallocated space then has to be converted into a new partition and formatted as ext4 file system. Then go on and follow this guide which tells you exactly how to make that new partition become your /home location.
Greetings and good luck.

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Byte Commander
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