Installing Gentoo Beta 1 on the Kuro Box
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4. Partitioning and Formatting the Hard Disk Drive

4. a. Creating the partitions

In this guide, we are going to set up the partitions in a simple fashion- nothing fancy. We want to end up with 3 hard disk partitions. In general terms, there will be 1 partition for the Linux operating system files, 1 for the virtual memory swap space, and 1 for all of the user data we plan to store on the Kuro Box.

Now we are ready to partition the drive with fdisk:

EM mode shell for root
# fdisk /dev/hda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 30515. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help):
Notes:

We will take a minute to learn about fdisk and what options it has. Enter an "m" at the prompt:

Learning fdisk
Command (m for help): m
Command action a toggle a bootable flag b edit bsd disklabel c toggle the dos compatibility flag d delete a partition l list known partition types m print this menu n add a new partition o create a new empty DOS partition table p print the partition table q quit without saving changes s create a new empty Sun disklabel t change a partition's system id u change display/entry units v verify the partition table w write table to disk and exit x extra functionality (experts only)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Command (m for help):
Notes:

As you can see, my disk is empty. If your disk contains any partitions, you should delete them using the "d" option. THIS WILL ERASE ANY DATA ON YOUR HARD DISK!

I will create the first partition:

Create 1st partition
Command (m for help): n
Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-30515, default 1): <enter>
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-30515, default 30515): +10240M
Notes: We took the default value of 1 for 1st cylinder and told it we wanted a 10 GB size.

Ok, now, the swap on hda2:

Create 2nd partition for swap
Command (m for help): n
Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (1247-30515, default 1247): <enter>
Using default value 1247
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1247-30515, default 30515): +512M
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): 82
Changed system type of partition 2 to 82 (Linux swap)
Notes: We took the default value for the 1st cylinder and told it we wanted a 512 MB size.

And finally, we create the 3rd partition and tell it to take all remaining space on the drive:

Create 3rd partition
Command (m for help): n
Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 3
First cylinder (1310-30515, default 1310): <enter>
Using default value 1310
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1310-30515, default 30515): <enter>
Notes: We took the default value for both 1st and last cylinder.

Lets check that the resulting partition table is what we were expecting:

Check the results
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes    Device Boot      Start      End        Blocks    Id    System /dev/hda1               1     1246     10008463+    83    Linux /dev/hda2            1247     1309       506047+    82    Linux swap /dev/hda3            1310    30515    224588700     83    Linux
Command (m for help):
Notes:

The results look good so we will write our changes to disk:

Write the changes to disk
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. Syncing disks.
#
Notes:

Now we are ready to move on.

4. b. Formatting the partitions

We will use the ext3 file system for all partitions. With additional kernel modules, it is possible to use other filesystems like reiserfs (except for the root partition), but I think using ext3 is really the safest solution.

The command to format with ext3 is "mke2fs -j /dev/hdaX" (where X is the partition number).

Format partition 1:

Format partition 1
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda1
mke2fs 1.22, 22-Jun-2001 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 1251712 inodes, 2502115 blocks 125105 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 77 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16256 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632 Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (8192 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 33 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
Notes:

Format partition 2 as a Linux swap volume:

Format partition 2 as a Linux swap volume
# mkswap /dev/hda2
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 518184960 bytes
Notes:

Format partition 3:

Format partition 3
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3
mke2fs 1.22, 22-Jun-2001 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 24330240 inodes, 48644812 blocks 2432240 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 1485 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16384 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872 Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (8192 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 26 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
Notes:

OK, now we are ready to move on.