If you are adding a new disk drive to a Red Hat Linux system and want to utilize
the ext3 file system, you must first partition the hard disk with a
program such as fdisk and then format the file
system.
To use fdisk, open a shell prompt and log in as the
root user. The fdisk command requires you to
specify the device you are partitioning as an argument to the
command. In the following examples, the device will be
/dev/hdb, which corresponds to the second device
on the primary IDE channel. To begin, type:
The following table provides the most common fdisk
commands.
Table 5-1. fdisk commands
| Command | What it Does |
|---|
| m | displays help |
| p | displays the current partition table |
| d | deletes a partition |
| n | creates a new partition |
| w | writes the partition table to disk |
| t | sets the anticipated file system type for the partition |
| l | displays the list of file system types for partitions |
| q | quits fdisk without altering the disk |
 | Tip |
|---|
| | If you need to exit the program at any time
without altering your disk, type
q.
|
Now that you are in the fdisk program, type
n to create a new partition. The program will
ask you to choose a partition type, choose
e for an extended and
p for a primary partition.
Before choosing the partition type, be aware that Red Hat Linux only allows up
to four primary partitions per disk. If you wish to create more than
that, one (and only one) of the four primary partitions may be an
extended partition, which acts as a container for one or more logical
partitions. Since it acts as a container, the extended partition must
be at least as large as the total size of all the logical partitions
it is to contain. For more information on disk partitions, see the
Appendix called An Introduction to Disk
Partitions in the Official Red Hat Linux Installation Guide.
After choosing the partition type and the number for that partition,
choose which cylinder head you would like the partition to start
on. You can type [Enter] to accept the default
value.
Next, specify the size. The easiest way to do this is to type
+sizeM, where
size is the size of the partition in
megabytes. If you press [Enter] without entering a
value, fdisk will use the remainder of the disk.
Repeat this process until you have created your desired partitioning
scheme.
| Tip |
|---|
| | It is a good idea to write down which partitions (for example,
/dev/hdb2) are meant for which file systems (for
example, /home/username) as you create each
partition.
|
Next, you will need to specify what type of file system you intend to
put on the disk because fdisk creates partitions of
type unknown by default.
To do this, type t followed by a partition
number. Next enter the hex value for the file system type you intend
to install on the partition. For Linux swap partitions. the hex value
is 82. For Linux ext2 or ext3 partitions, the
hex value is 83. For other partition types, use
the l command to see a list of file system types
and their hex values. Repeat this for each partition you created.
When you are finished making partitions, type w to
save your changes and quit.
 | Warning |
|---|
| | By typing w, you are permanently destroying
any data that currently exists on the device. If you need wish to
preserve any data, type q to exit the program
without altering the disk and back up your data.
|
Once you have created partitions on the disk drive using a partitioning
program such as fdisk, you should use
mkfs to create an ext3 file system on each
partition.
To do this, log in as root and type:
/sbin/mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdbX |
In the above command, replace hdb with the
drive letter and X with the
partition number.
| Warning |
|---|
| | Using mkfs to format a disk partition will
permanently destroy any data that currently exists on the
partition.
|
Once you have created and formated a partition, you should assign it a
label using the e2label command. This allows you to
add the partition to /etc/fstab using a label
instead of using a device path, thereby making the system more robust.
[1]
To add a label to a partition, type the following command as root:
/sbin/e2label /dev/hdbX /mount/point |
Where hdb is the drive letter,
X is the partition number, and
/mount/point is the mount point you
intend to use for the partition.
Once you have assigned each partition a label, add the partitions to
/etc/fstab. To do this, log in as root and type:
Then add a line to /etc/fstab for each labeled partition similar to this:
LABEL=/mount/point /mount/point ext3 defaults 1 2 |
In the above entry in /etc/fstab, replace
each occurrence of
/mount/point with the mount point you
intend to use for the partition.
If you need more information on the various options available to you
in /etc/fstab, type man fstab.
If there are partitions whose label you are unsure of, type the
following command:
/sbin/tune2fs -l /dev/hdbX |grep volume |
In the above command, replace hdb with the
drive letter and X with the
partition number.
This will return something similar to the output below:
Filesystem volume name: /mount/point |
In this output, /mount/point is the volume
label.
After completing the above steps, you will have successfully added a
new ext3 disk to the system. The next section demonstrates how to
convert an ext2 disk partition to an ext3 partition.
