<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Appendix: More on partitioning</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Installing GNU/Linux on the IBM RS/6000 43P model 7248 HOWTO" HREF="t1.htm"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Appendix: Using cfdisk to partition your harddisk" HREF="x900.htm"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Appendix: Make SMS and firmware floppies from Linux" HREF="x969.htm"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Installing GNU/Linux on the IBM RS/6000 43P model 7248 HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x900.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x969.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="MORE-ON-PARTITIONING" ></A >Appendix: More on partitioning</H1 ><P > After several questions on what partitioning really is, I'll just quote an answer I gave in a mail once. </P ><P > Okay, here goes: </P ><P > In an operating system you need several different filesystems for several different applications. For example, you need a swap filesystem because your main memory can't hold all information the operating system needs, so some of it has to be temporary written to disk. You may also need some special filesystem from which the machine reads the operating system when you switch it on. Finally, you need of course one or more filesystems to store the operating system program files and your user files. It may be a good idea to put these in different places (ie. on different filesystems) in case you have to reinstall the operating system, but don't want to scratch all your work. </P ><P > The best thing is maybe to have all these filesystems on different disks. But one has seldom more than one or two disks in a computer. So what we do is to slice up the disk(s) in several slices (partitions) and use the slices for several filesystems. Then the operating system mounts the filesystems together to one single file tree, so it is easy to access the files. </P ><P > (Other operating systems, like MS-DOS and NT use some other technology: They do not bind the slices together to one file tree, but keeps them separate as "stations". What is the best scheme? You figure!) </P ><P > Here a thought example with one 2GB disk on a 7248: The mount point shows where in the file tree a filesystem is mounted. </P ><P > <PRE CLASS="SCREEN" > Partition Size Type Mountpoint Bootable ---------------------------------------------------------------- /dev/sda1 10MB 41 (PReP Boot) (Not mounted) yes /dev/sda2 150MB 82 (Linux Swap) (Not mounted) - /dev/sda3 1840MB 83 (Linux ext2) / (Root partition) - </PRE > This would give a bootprompt command like this: <PRE CLASS="SCREEN" > root=/dev/sda3 </PRE > </P ><P > If you want, you could add own partitions for important directories like /home, /boot, /var, /usr/local and so on. Here is an other example with two disks, actually my own configuration with two disks: <PRE CLASS="SCREEN" > Partition Size Type Mountpoint Bootable ---------------------------------------------------------------- /dev/sda1 20MB 43 (PReP Boot) (Not mounted) yes /dev/sda2 133MB 82 (Linux Swap) (Not mounted) - /dev/sda5 930MB 83 (Linux ext2) / (Root partition) - /dev/sdb1 315MB 83 (Linux ext2) /home - /dev/sdb2 770MB 83 (Linux ext2) /usr/local - </PRE > This would give a bootprompt command like this: <PRE CLASS="SCREEN" > root=/dev/sda5 </PRE > Before you ask: <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > ext2 is Linux' standard filesystem </P ></LI ><LI ><P > GNU/Linux often uses the old partition scheme from MS-DOS. This means that if there are more than 4 partitions on one disk, one uses an extended partition (sda4) that may hold several logical partitions (sda5, sda6, sda7, ...) </P ></LI ><LI ><P > Yes, my partition scheme is a bad one. My root partition was filled up in a couple of weeks or so. Don't use it. It is an example only. </P ></LI ></UL > </P ><P > Hope this clears up some things. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x900.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="t1.htm" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x969.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Appendix: Using cfdisk to partition your harddisk</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Appendix: Make SMS and firmware floppies from Linux</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >