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The Quick-N-Dirty Guide to fdisk

The aim of this QND guide is to get you up and running quickly with fdisk. There will be far more how than why here.

Although most distros usually have their own graphical partitioning tools, it is good to be familiar with fdisk. One never knows when they may have to use it--sometimes graphical tools don't work properly.

Many, if not most, distributions also now have cfdisk which is somewhat easier to use. However, there are times when cfdisk too, won't work and fdisk will.

1.) Do you have fdisk?

You should definitely have fdisk available. If not, something is probably wrong with your system. However it is one of those commands that is run by root or with root privilege. Therefore, it might not be visible (depending upon distribution) as normal user. You may have to either log in as root or do
su -

instead of using sudo or a simple su.

2.) Using fdisk

In this case, the easiest way to explain fdisk's use is by example. We will assume that you have a 10 gig hard drive. 3 gigs are devoted to Windows and now you wish to install Linux on the other 7 gigs. For purposes of this example, we will create an extended partition and inside of it create 3 logical partitions. One will be swap, one will be a small /boot partition and the last will use up the remaining free space.

Although most versions of LILO and GRUB will, on modern computers, now boot beyond the 1024th disk cylinder, we're keeping our boot partition within the first 4 gigs of the drive. (There are other reasons to keep a separate /boot partition, but it often simply depends upon personal perference. At any rate, that is beyond the scope of this guide.)

First, we see what we have

fdisk /dev/hda

This will start the fdisk program. Now, to see what is already there, type

p

The p stands for print, and will show you what exists. At present, you should only have one partition, the one that is holding Windows. (I've found that Windows seems to partition disks differently--with Slackware, for example, I also get a warning that the partition doesn't end where it should--however, it hasn't caused me problems, so, I shrug it off.)

Now, we want to refresh our memory on the commands so we type

m

(In this case, I assume it stands for manual). It will show me the possible commands.

Firstly, I want to create my swap partition. One could make a new primary partition, but I don't find it necessary so, I type

n

I'm then asked do I want a primary partition or extended partition. I'm told to type p for primary or e for extended. I choose e for extended.

Next I'm asked for a number for the partition, usually given the choice of 1-4. I pick 2 as it's the next partition.

It will then ask for the first cylinder, showing the default, which is the next cylinder next to the already existing Windows partition. Hit enter to accept the default. Then it asks for the last cylinder--the default is the end of the drive and again I hit enter to accept it.

I then again type p to verify that I did what I wanted. Hopefully it is showing me what I asked for.

Now I type n again for a new partition. This will be my swap partition. I'm asked do I want to make a primary one or a logical one. As you might guess, I'm told to type p for primary and l for logical. I choose l, as I'm making a partition within the extended partition.

I'm then informed that the numbers will begin at 5. I'm then asked for the first cylinder--again I choose the default, which is the first cylinder available.

I'm then asked for the last cylinder--however, I'm also given the option of specifying my size in Megabytes by typing + (desired size)M. I want my swap partition to be 128 Megabytes so I type

+128M

I hit enter. One could type p again to verify that it's going the way you want it to, that's up to you. Doing that, I find that this 128 Meg partition is Linux native, which I don't want, I want Linux swap. So, I then type

t

It will ask me which partition's type do I want to change. I pick 5, which is my first logical partition. (I can also discover this with the p command--the partition will be /dev/hda5). I'm then asked for the type, and told I can type L for a list of hex codes. I already know that swap is hex code 82, so I type

82

Now, I'm making my boot partition. This can be of various sizes--RH recommends 16 Megs, so I make it 20 Megs just in case. So, I begin by typing

n

Again, I'm presented with the choice for logical or primary and choose logical. Again I'm given the default 1st cylinder, which I accept and again asked for the last cylinder, with the option to specify size in Megabytes.

I type

+20M

This gives me a 20 meg partition to use as boot. It might be slightly different, as like the fdisk found in DOS fdisk will determine cylinder boundries and adjust accordingly.

Once again I type p to see what I have. I now see one Windows partition, and one extended partition. The extended partition has one 128 meg logical partition as Linux swap and a 20 meg Linux native partition.

So, once again, we type n to create the final partition. (If you were making separate partitions for /usr, /home, etc you could make more--however, we're keeping it simple here.

Again, I'm asked to choose between logical and primary and choose logical. I'm asked for the first cylinder, with the default being the first unused one, which I accept by pressing enter--I'm then asked for the last cylinder, with the default being the last cylinder on the disk. Once again I press enter to accept it.

Lastly, I press

w

This writes the changes to disk--there are various warnings and messages. In most cases, you're done. In others, you might be told that you have to reboot for the changes to take place.

references

man fdisk

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