Unsuccessful attempts of deleting partitions by FDISK

[Alberto]

Hello, I have, some days ago, installed a basic Debian Sarge on my PC in dual boot with its native O.S. (Windows 98 SE) on the 2nd hard drive. Now I wanted to change my partitions (made with Debian installer) so, I tried to delete them using FDISK (on a Knoppix live CD) but when I typed the command "d" I received this message: "No partition is defined yet!". So, I tried to look at these partitions by "Partition Magic" and it didn't see them at all, but saw only one partition, as big as the whole hard drive (about 20 GB), defined as "Bad partition" and I was not allowed neither to create a new partition nor to delete it. I will be grateful to you if somebody gives me some advice to solve this problem.
With kind regards,
Alberto

[grautu]

Hello, I have, some days ago, installed a basic Debian Sarge on my PC in dual boot with its native O.S. (Windows 98 SE) on the 2nd hard drive. Now I wanted to change my partitions (made with Debian installer) so, I tried to delete them using FDISK (on a Knoppix live CD) but when I typed the command "d" I received this message: "No partition is defined yet!". So, I tried to look at these partitions by "Partition Magic" and it didn't see them at all, but saw only one partition, as big as the whole hard drive (about 20 GB), defined as "Bad partition" and I was not allowed neither to create a new partition nor to delete it. I will be grateful to you if somebody gives me some advice to solve this problem.
With kind regards,
Alberto

You may use the "parted" command (say under Knoppix) to edit partitions. Assuming the partition to delete is on /dev/hda, your command should be (as root)
parted /dev/hda
Assuming I'm not wrong Knoppix does acknowlege you as a root by simply typing "su -" followed by <Enter> (try more if that does not work). After "parted" you get another prompted
(parted)
Your next command should be
print
to print all partitions on /dev/hda
Keep in mind the "minor" number (say N) of the partition to delete and remove that partition as
rm N
Verify again by "print" (your N partition should not appear anymore) exit the (parted) prompt by command
quit
and finally exit the rescue Knoppix mode by
exit
command. Assuming I'm not wrong, your machine will reboote. PLease anybody correct me if the case.
Thanks!

[Alberto]

Hello,
I followed your instruction and everything is now all right . Only a thing was different: the last command exit didn't work so I had to switch off power manually, then I had to boot again twice as the first time I obtained a black screen and my PC BIOS was emitting some beeps. For the process I used PAUD ver. 1.0.4 (Parted and Utilities Disk) on a floppy disk. At last I obtained a unallocaded space as big as the drive on which I could make a partition.
Thanks a lot,
Alberto

[grautu]

the last command exit didn't work so I had to switch off power manually, then I had to boot again twice as the first time I obtained a black screen and my PC BIOS was emitting some beeps.

Congratulations! Indeed, the "exit" command (after "quit") does not reboot (I was mixing Knoppix with Fedora "rescue" mode) but merely starts the way back by leaving the "(parted)" prompt and getting back the former root prompt "#". Then one may avoid switching off by typing "exit" (so as to get back the former user prompt "$"), "exit" again (to leave the terminal and get back the former X session) and finally restart the computer by the usual way of X Window sessions.