Partitioning with Disk Druid

If you are performing a workstation-class installation and you chose automatic partitioning, please skip to the section called Network Configuration.

NotePlease Note
 

Manual partitioning is outside the scope of this chapter. Although Disk Druid will be briefly covered, fdisk will not be discussed. For complete instructions on using Disk Druid or fdisk, please refer to the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD.

At this point, it's necessary to let the installation program know where it should install Red Hat Linux. This is done by defining mount points for one or more disk partitions in which Red Hat Linux will be installed. You may also need to create and/or delete partitions at this time (refer to Figure 6-7).

Figure 6-7. Partitioning with Disk Druid

NotePlease Note
 

If you have not yet planned how you will set up your partitions, refer to the partitioning appendix in the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD. As a bare minimum, you'll need an appropriately-sized[1] root partition, and a swap partition of at least 16 MB.

The partitioning tool used in Red Hat Linux 7.0 is Disk Druid. With the exception of certain esoteric situations, Disk Druid can handle the partitioning requirements for a typical Red Hat Linux installation.

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

Problems When Adding a Partition

If you attempt to add a partition and Disk Druid can't carry out your request, you'll see a dialog box listing partitions that are currently unallocated, along with the reason they could not be allocated. Unallocated partition(s) are also displayed on Disk Druid's main screen (though you may have to scroll through the "Partitions" section to see them).

To fix an unallocated requested partition, you must move the partition to another drive which has the available space, resize the partition to fit on the current drive, or delete the partition entirely. Make changes using the Edit button or by double clicking on the partition.

Formatting Partitions

Next, select which partitions you want to format (see Figure 6-8). You must format all newly created partitions. Partitions containing data that you wish to keep (such as /home or /usr) should not be formatted.

Figure 6-8. Formatting Partitions

When you have selected the partitions to format, press Space. If you wish to check for bad blocks while formatting each filesystem (recommended for those with older disk drives), select Check for bad blocks during format. Select OK, and press Space.

NotePlease Note
 

Selecting check for bad blocks may dramatically increase your total installation time. Since most newer hard drives are quite large in size, checking for bad blocks may take a while depending on the size of your hard drive.

Notes

[1]

Appropriately-sized is best defined by the amount of available space you have to dedicate to Red Hat Linux, the size of the installation you are preparing for, and the space you will physically dedicate to Red Hat Linux. We recommend 900M for a minimum root partition size.