Linux Partition HOWTO

Anthony Lissot

Revision History
Revision 3.5 26 Dec 2005
reorganized document page ordering. added page on setting up swap space. added page of partition labels. updated max swap size values in section 4. added instructions on making ext2/3 file systems. broken links identified by Richard Calmbach are fixed. created an XML version.
Revision 3.4.4 08 March 2004
synchronized SGML version with HTML version. Updated lilo placement and swap size discussion.
Revision 3.3 04 April 2003
synchronized SGML and HTML versions
Revision 3.3 10 July 2001
Corrected Section 6, calculation of cylinder numbers
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 Anthony Lissot 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 here. The Turkish translation is here.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. What is a partition?
1.2. Other Partitioning Software:
1.3. Related HOWTOs
1.4. Additional information on your system:
2. Devices
2.1. Device names
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
4.4. Swap Partitions
5. Partitioning with fdisk
5.1. fdisk usage
5.2. Four primary partitions
5.3. Mixed primary and logical partitions
5.4. Submitted Examples
6. Labels
6.1. Volume Labels
6.2. Device Labels
7. Formatting an ext2/3 partition
.1. Simple Invocation
.2. Reserved blocks
8. Recovering a Deleted Partition Table
9. Setting Up Swap Space
9.1. Swap Files
9.2. Swap Files
9.3. Multiple Swap Areas
10. Appendix
10.1. Formating Partitions
10.2. Activating Swap Space
10.3. Mounting Partitions
10.4. Some facts about file systems and fragmentation
    Next
    Introduction