So I screwed up Ubuntu, and reinstalled it on another partition, leaving me with a 43GB filesystem that had my screwed up Ubuntu on it. I used GParted to destroy the partition and make a new one, and...now I can't do anything with it, because the owner is root. ffffffffffff- How can I fix this? I mean, what I really wanted was to destroy the partition and add that free space onto the partition that my good Ubuntu installation is on, but I settled for having it as separate. If someone could help me on this too, that'd be awesome. EDIT: I figured the first part out, wouldn't you know it.
If it's formatted, just chown it for yourself and use it however you wish. "sudo chown -R username:username /path/to/drive"
I figured that part out, but I was hoping I could just add the free space onto the partition that ubuntu is now installed on instead of having it as a seperate file system.
Aren't you meant to destroy the partition, then resize the one you want to make larger to cover the gap? (can you resize a partition on which an OS is installed?)
That's just it. gparted didn't let me resize the partition that ubuntu is installed on without unmounting it...which you can't do. Unless I'm missing something.
The point is that he can't unmount the partition. But yeah, using sudo (and thereby doing stuff as root literally) should let you unmount any partition as needed.
DO NOT UNMOUNT THE PARTITION FROM YOUR RUNNING FILESYSTEM. Unmounting it will make it so you cannot run programs which are saved on the disk itself. Instead, use delete the empty partition, and leave it as empty space, then use an Ubuntu Live CD to run GParted. Use Gparted from a Live CD because it can umount your disk properly and expand the good partition to fill all space.
GParted Live CD Small enough to fit on a mini-CD (not a business card CD though) and quicker to boot than a whole Ubuntu live DVD.