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Linux Partition HOWTO

Tony Harris

Kristian Koehntopp

Revision History                                                             
Revision 3.4                   25 March 2001                                 
Rewrote device names (Section 2) to include examples.                        
Revision 3.3                   23 Feb 2001                                   
Kristian contributes discussion on cylinder mapping Included example from    
Karsten Self in Section 5 Added making a generic ramdisk Dan Scott is        
credited for converting version 3.2 to SGML                                  
Revision 3.2                   1 September 2000                              
Dan Scott provides sgml conversion 2 Oct. 2000. Rewrote Introduction. Rewrote
discussion on device names in Logical Devices. Reorganized Partition Types.  
Edited Partition Requirements. Added Recovering a deleted partition table.   
Revision 3.1                   12 June 2000                                  
Corrected swap size limitation in Partition Requirements, updated various    
links in Introduction, added submitted example in How to Partition with      
fdisk, added file system discussion in Partition Requirements.               
Revision 3.0                   1 May 2000                                    
First revision by [mailto:tony@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu] Tony Harris based on     
Linux Partition HOWTO by Kristian Koehntopp.                                 
Revision 2.4                   3 November 1997                               
Last revision by Kristian Koehntopp.                                         

This Linux Mini-HOWTO teaches you how to plan and create partitions on IDE
and SCSI hard drives. It discusses partitioning terminology and considers
size and location issues. Use of the fdisk partitioning utility for creating
and recovering of partition tables is covered. The most recent version of
this document is [http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/partition/Partition.html]
here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
    1.1. What is a partition?
    1.2. Constraints
    1.3. Other Partitioning Software:
    1.4. Related HOWTOs
    1.5. Additional information on your system:
      
2. Devices
    2.1. Device names
        2.1.1. Naming Convention
        2.1.2. Name Assignment    
    2.2. Device numbers
   
3. Partition Types
    3.1. Partition Types
    3.2. Foreign Partition Types
    3.3. Primary Partitions
    3.4. Logical Partitions
    3.5. Swap Partitions
   
4. Partitioning requirements
    4.1. What Partitions do I need?
    4.2. Discussion:
    4.3. File Systems
        4.3.1. Which file systems need their own partitions?
        4.3.2. File lifetimes and backup cycles as partitioning criteria    
    4.4. Swap Partitions
        4.4.1. How large should my swap space be?
        4.4.2. Where should I put my swap space?
       
5. Partitioning with fdisk
    5.1. Partitioning with fdisk
        5.1.1. Notes about fdisk:
        5.1.2. Four primary partitions
        5.1.3. Mixed primary and logical partitions
        5.1.4. Submitted Examples
       
6. Recovering a Deleted Partition Table

7. Formating Partitions
    7.1. Activating Swap Space
    7.2. Mounting Partitions
    7.3. Some facts about file systems and fragmentation

Next: Section 1: Introduction »