4.16. Partitioning Your System

If you chose automatic partitioning and did not select Review, skip ahead to Section 4.18 Network Configuration.

If you chose automatic partitioning and selected Review, you can either accept the current partition settings (click Next), or modify the setup using Disk Druid, the manual partitioning tool.

If you chose to partition manually, you must tell the installation program where to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is done by defining mount points for one or more disk partitions in which Red Hat Enterprise Linux is installed. You may also need to create and/or delete partitions at this time.

NoteNote
 

If you have not yet planned how to set up your partitions, refer to Appendix D An Introduction to Disk Partitions and Section 4.16.4 Recommended Partitioning Scheme. At a bare minimum, you need an appropriately-sized root partition, and a swap partition equal to twice the amount of RAM you have on the system. Itanium system users should have a /boot/efi/ partition of approximately 100 MB and of type FAT (VFAT), a swap partition of at least 512 MB, and an appropriately-sized root (/) partition.

Figure 4-11. Partitioning with Disk Druid on x86, AMD64, and Intel® EM64T Systems

Figure 4-12. Partitioning with Disk Druid on Itanium Systems

The partitioning tool used by the installation program is Disk Druid. With the exception of certain esoteric situations, Disk Druid can handle the partitioning requirements for a typical installation.

4.16.1. Graphical Display of Hard Drive(s)

Disk Druid offers a graphical representation of your hard drive(s).

Using your mouse, click once to highlight a particular field in the graphical display. Double-click to edit an existing partition or to create a partition out of existing free space.

Above the display, you can review the Drive name (such as /dev/hda), the Geom (which shows the hard disk's geometry and consists of three numbers representing the number of cylinders, heads, and sectors as reported by the hard disk), and the Model of the hard drive as detected by the installation program.

4.16.2. Disk Druid's Buttons

These buttons control Disk Druid's actions. They are used to change the attributes of a partition (for example the file system type and mount point) and also to create RAID devices. Buttons on this screen are also used to accept the changes you have made, or to exit Disk Druid. For further explanation, take a look at each button in order:

4.16.3. Partition Fields

Above the partition hierarchy are labels which present information about the partitions you are creating. The labels are defined as follows:

Hide RAID device/LVM Volume Group members: Select this option if you do not want to view any RAID device or LVM Volume Group members that have been created.

4.16.4. Recommended Partitioning Scheme

Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions for Itanium systems:

Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions for x86, AMD64, and Intel® EM64T systems:

4.16.5. Adding Partitions

To add a new partition, select the New button. A dialog box appears (refer to Figure 4-13).

NoteNote
 

You must dedicate at least one partition for this installation, and optionally more. For more information, refer to Appendix D An Introduction to Disk Partitions.

Figure 4-13. Creating a New Partition

4.16.5.1. File System Types

Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows you to create different partition types, based on the file system they will use. The following is a brief description of the different file systems available, and how they can be utilized.

  • ext2 — An ext2 file system supports standard Unix file types (regular files, directories, symbolic links, etc). It provides the ability to assign long file names, up to 255 characters.

  • ext3 — The ext3 file system is based on the ext2 file system and has one main advantage — journaling. Using a journaling file system reduces time spent recovering a file system after a crash as there is no need to fsck[1] the file system. The ext3 file system is selected by default and is highly recommended.

  • physical volume (LVM) — Creating one or more physical volume (LVM) partitions allows you to create an LVM logical volume. LVM can improve performance when using physical disks. For more information regarding LVM, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide.

  • software RAID — Creating two or more software RAID partitions allows you to create a RAID device. For more information regarding RAID, refer to the chapter RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide.

  • swap — Swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your system is processing. Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide for additional information.

  • vfat — The VFAT file system is a Linux file system that is compatible with Microsoft Windows long filenames on the FAT file system. This file system must be used for the /boot/efi/ partition on Itanuim systems.

4.16.6. Editing Partitions

To edit a partition, select the Edit button or double-click on the existing partition.

NoteNote
 

If the partition already exists on your hard disk, you can only change the partition's mount point. To make any other changes, you must delete the partition and recreate it.

4.16.7. Deleting a Partition

To delete a partition, highlight it in the Partitions section and click the Delete button. Confirm the deletion when prompted.

For further installation instructions for x86, AMD64, and Intel® EM64T systems, skip to Section 4.17 x86, AMD64, and Intel® EM64T Boot Loader Configuration.

For further installation instructions for Itanium systems, skip to Section 4.18 Network Configuration.

Notes

[1]

The fsck application is used to check the file system for metadata consistency and optionally repair one or more Linux file systems.