en/handbook/hb-install-ia64-disk.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE sections SYSTEM "/dtd/book.dtd">

<!-- The content of this document is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license -->
<!-- See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5 -->

<!-- $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/handbook/hb-install-ia64-disk.xml,v 1.15 2013/02/23 18:38:22 swift Exp $ -->

<sections>

<version>11</version>
<date>2013-12-17</date>

<section>
<title>Introduction to Block Devices</title>

<subsection>
<include href="hb-install-blockdevices.xml"/>
</subsection>

<subsection>
<title>Partitions</title>
<body>

<p>
Although it is theoretically possible to use a full disk to house your Linux
system, this is almost never done in practice. Instead, full disk block devices
are split up in smaller, more manageable block devices. On <keyval id="arch"/>
systems, these are called <e>partitions</e>. 
</p>

<p>
Itanium systems use EFI, the Extensible Firmware Interface, for booting.  The
partition table format that EFI understands is called GPT, or GUID Partition
Table.  The partitioning program that understands GPT is called "parted", so
that is the tool we will use below.  Additionally, EFI can only read FAT
filesystems, so that is the format to use for the EFI boot partition, where the
kernel will be installed by "elilo".
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Advanced Storage</title>
<body>

<p>
The <keyval id="arch"/> Installation CDs provide support for LVM2.
LVM2 increases the flexibility offered by your partitioning setup.
During the installation instructions, we will focus on "regular" partitions,
but it is still good to know LVM2 is supported as well.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section>
<title>Designing a Partitioning Scheme</title>
<subsection>
<title>Default Partitioning Scheme</title>
<body>

<p>
If you are not interested in drawing up a partitioning scheme for your system,
you can use the partitioning scheme we use throughout this book:
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Partition</th>
  <th>Filesystem</th>
  <th>Size</th>
  <th>Description</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda1</path></ti>
  <ti>vfat</ti>
  <ti>32M</ti>
  <ti>EFI Boot partition</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda2</path></ti>
  <ti>(swap)</ti>
  <ti>512M</ti>
  <ti>Swap partition</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda3</path></ti>
  <ti>ext4</ti>
  <ti>Rest of the disk</ti>
  <ti>Root partition</ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
If you are interested in knowing how big a partition should be, or even how
many partitions you need, read on. Otherwise continue now with partitioning
your disk by reading <uri link="#parted">Using parted to Partition your
Disk</uri>.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>How Many and How Big?</title>
<body>

<p>
The number of partitions is highly dependent on your environment. For instance,
if you have lots of users, you will most likely want to have your
<path>/home</path> separate as it increases security and makes backups easier.
If you are installing Gentoo to perform as a mailserver, your
<path>/var</path> should be separate as all mails are stored inside
<path>/var</path>. A good choice of filesystem will then maximise your
performance. Gameservers will have a separate <path>/opt</path> as most gaming
servers are installed there. The reason is similar for <path>/home</path>:
security and backups. You will definitely want to keep <path>/usr</path> big:
not only will it contain the majority of applications, the Portage tree alone
takes around 500 Mbyte excluding the various sources that are stored in it.
</p>

<p>
As you can see, it very much depends on what you want to achieve. Separate
partitions or volumes have the following advantages:
</p>

<ul>
<li>
  You can choose the best performing filesystem for each partition or volume
</li>
<li>
  Your entire system cannot run out of free space if one defunct tool is
  continuously writing files to a partition or volume
</li>
<li>
  If necessary, file system checks are reduced in time, as multiple checks can
  be done in parallel (although this advantage is more with multiple disks than
  it is with multiple partitions)
</li>
<li>
  Security can be enhanced by mounting some partitions or volumes read-only,
  nosuid (setuid bits are ignored), noexec (executable bits are ignored) etc.
</li>
</ul>

<p>
However, multiple partitions have disadvantages as well. If not configured
properly, you will have a system with lots of free space on one partition and
none on another. Another nuisance is that separate partitions - especially
for important mountpoints like <path>/usr</path> or <path>/var</path> - often
require the administrator to boot with an initramfs to mount the partition
before other boot scripts start. This isn't always the case though, so your
results may vary.
</p>

<p>
There is also a 15-partition limit for SCSI and SATA, unless you use GPT
labels.
</p>

<p>
As an example partitioning, we show you one for a 20GB disk, used as a
demonstration laptop (containing webserver, mailserver, gnome, ...):
</p>

<pre caption="Filesystem usage example">
$ <i>df -h</i>
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5     ext4    509M  132M  351M  28% /
/dev/sda2     ext4    5.0G  3.0G  1.8G  63% /home
/dev/sda7     ext4    7.9G  6.2G  1.3G  83% /usr
/dev/sda8     ext4   1011M  483M  477M  51% /opt
/dev/sda9     ext4    2.0G  607M  1.3G  32% /var
/dev/sda1     ext2     51M   17M   31M  36% /boot
/dev/sda6     swap    516M   12M  504M   2% &lt;not mounted&gt;
<comment>(Unpartitioned space for future usage: 2 GB)</comment>
</pre>

<p>
<path>/usr</path> is rather full (83% used) here, but once
all software is installed, <path>/usr</path> doesn't tend to grow that much.
Although allocating a few gigabytes of disk space for <path>/var</path> may
seem excessive, remember that Portage uses this partition by default for
compiling packages. If you want to keep <path>/var</path> at a more reasonable
size, such as 1GB, you will need to alter your <c>PORTAGE_TMPDIR</c> variable
in <path>/etc/portage/make.conf</path> to point to the partition with enough
free space for compiling extremely large packages such as LibreOffice.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section id="parted">
<title>Using parted to Partition your Disk</title>
<subsection>
<body>

<p>
The following parts explain how to create the example partition layout
described previously, namely:
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Partition</th>
  <th>Description</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda1</path></ti>
  <ti>EFI Boot partition</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda2</path></ti>
  <ti>Swap partition</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti><path>/dev/sda3</path></ti>
  <ti>Root partition</ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
Change your partition layout according to your own preference.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Viewing the Current Partition Layout</title>
<body>

<p>
<c>parted</c> is the GNU partition editor.
Fire up <c>parted</c> on your disk (in our example, we use
<path>/dev/sda</path>):
</p>

<pre caption="Starting parted">
# <i>parted /dev/sda</i>
</pre>

<p>
Once in <c>parted</c>, you'll be greeted with a prompt that looks like this:
</p>

<pre caption="parted prompt">
GNU Parted 1.6.22
Copyright (C) 1998 - 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without
even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

Using /dev/sda
(parted)
</pre>

<p>
At this point one of the available commands is <c>help</c>, which you should use
if you want to see the other available commands.  Another command is
<c>print</c> which you should type next to display your disk's current partition
configuration:
</p>

<pre caption="An example partition configuration">
(parted) <i>print</i>
Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
1          0.017    203.938  fat32                             boot
2        203.938   4243.468  linux-swap
3       4243.469  34724.281  ext4
</pre>

<p>
This particular configuration is very similar to the one that we recommend
above.  Note on the second line that the partition table is type is GPT.  If it
is different, then the ia64 system will not be able to boot from this disk.
For the sake of this guide we'll remove the partitions and create them anew.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Removing all Partitions</title>
<body>

<note>
Unlike fdisk and some other partitioning programs which postpone committing
changes until you give the write instruction, parted commands take effect
immediately.  So once you start adding and removing partitions, you can't
simply quit without writing them... they've already been written.
</note>

<p>
The easy way to remove all partitions and start fresh, which guarantees that we
are using the correct partition type, is to make a new partition table using the
<c>mklabel</c> command.  After you do this, you will have an empty GPT partition
table.
</p>

<pre caption="Creating a new partition table">
(parted) <i>mklabel gpt</i>
(parted) <i>print</i>
Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
</pre>

<p>
Now that the partition table is empty, we're ready to create the
partitions. We will use a default partitioning scheme as discussed previously.
Of course, don't follow these instructions to the letter if you don't want the
same partitioning scheme!
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Creating the EFI Boot Partition</title>
<body>

<p>
We first create a small EFI boot partition. This is required to be a FAT
filesystem in order for the <keyval id="arch"/> firmware to read it. Our
example makes this 32 MB, which is appropriate for storing kernels and
<c>elilo</c> configuration. You can expect each <keyval id="arch"/> kernel to
be around 5 MB, so this configuration leaves you some room to grow and
experiment.
</p>

<pre caption="Creating the boot partition">
(parted) <i>mkpart primary fat32 0 32</i>
(parted) <i>print</i>
Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
1          0.017     32.000  fat32
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Creating the Swap Partition</title>
<body>

<p>
Let's now create the swap partition.  The classic size to make the swap
partition was twice the amount of RAM in the system.  In modern systems with
lots of RAM, this is no longer necessary.  For most desktop systems, a 512
megabyte swap partition is sufficient.  For a server, you should consider
something larger to reflect the anticipated needs of the server.
</p>

<pre caption="Creating the swap partition">
(parted) <i>mkpart primary linux-swap 32 544</i>
(parted) <i>print</i>
Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
1          0.017     32.000  fat32
2         32.000    544.000
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Creating the Root Partition</title>
<body>

<p>
Finally, let's create the root partition.  Our configuration will make the root
partition to occupy the rest of the disk.  We default to ext4, but you can use
ext2, jfs, reiserfs or xfs if you prefer.  The actual filesystem is not created
in this step, but the partition table contains an indication of what kind of
filesystem is stored on each partition, and it's a good idea to make the table
match your intentions.
</p>

<pre caption="Creating the root partition">
(parted) <i>mkpart primary ext4 544 34732.890</i>
(parted) <i>print</i>
Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
1          0.017     32.000  fat32
2         32.000    544.000
3        544.000  34732.874
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Exiting parted</title>
<body>

<p>
To quit from parted, type <c>quit</c>.  There's no need to take a separate step
to save your partition layout since parted has been saving it all along.  As you
leave, parted gives you reminder to update your <c>/etc/fstab</c>, which we'll
do later in this guide.
</p>

<pre caption="Quit from parted">
(parted) <i>quit</i>
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.
</pre>

<p>
Now that your partitions are created, you can continue with <uri
link="#filesystems">Creating Filesystems</uri>.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section id="filesystems">
<title>Creating Filesystems</title>
<subsection>
<title>Introduction</title>
<body>

<p>
Now that your partitions are created, it is time to place a filesystem on them. 
If you don't care about what filesystem to choose and are happy with what we use
as default in this handbook, continue with <uri 
link="#filesystems-apply">Applying a Filesystem to a Partition</uri>.
Otherwise read on to learn about the available filesystems...
</p>

</body>
</subsection>

<subsection>
<include href="hb-install-filesystems.xml"/>
</subsection>

<subsection id="filesystems-apply">
<title>Applying a Filesystem to a Partition</title>
<body>

<p>
To create a filesystem on a partition or volume, there are tools available for 
each possible filesystem:
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Filesystem</th>
  <th>Creation Command</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>vfat</ti>
  <ti><c>mkdosfs</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>ext2</ti>
  <ti><c>mkfs.ext2</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>ext3</ti>
  <ti><c>mkfs.ext3</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>ext4</ti>
  <ti><c>mkfs.ext4</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>reiserfs</ti>
  <ti><c>mkreiserfs</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>xfs</ti>
  <ti><c>mkfs.xfs</c></ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <ti>jfs</ti>
  <ti><c>mkfs.jfs</c></ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
For instance, to have the boot partition (<path>/dev/sda1</path> in our
example) as vfat and the root partition (<path>/dev/sda3</path> in our example)
as ext4, you would run the following commands:
</p>

<pre caption="Applying a filesystem on a partition">
# <i>mkdosfs /dev/sda1</i>
# <i>mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3</i>
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Activating the Swap Partition</title>
<body>

<p>
<c>mkswap</c> is the command that is used to initialize swap partitions:
</p>

<pre caption="Creating a Swap signature">
# <i>mkswap /dev/sda2</i>
</pre>

<p>
To activate the swap partition, use <c>swapon</c>:
</p>

<pre caption="Activating the swap partition">
# <i>swapon /dev/sda2</i>
</pre>

<p>
Create and activate the swap with the commands mentioned above.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section>
<title>Mounting</title>
<body>

<p>
Now that your partitions are initialized and are housing a filesystem, it is
time to mount those partitions. Use the <c>mount</c> command. Don't forget to
create the necessary mount directories for every partition you created. As an
example we mount the root and boot partition:
</p>

<pre caption="Mounting the root partition">
# <i>mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo</i>
</pre>

<note>
Unlike some of the other architectures supported by Gentoo, <path>/boot</path>
is not mounted on ia64. The reason for this is that the EFI boot partition will
be automatically mounted and written by the <c>elilo</c> command each time that
you run it. Because of this, <path>/boot</path> resides on the root filesystem
and is the storage place for the kernels referenced by your <c>elilo</c>
configuration.
</note>

<note>
If you want your <path>/tmp</path> to reside on a separate partition, be sure to
change its permissions after mounting: <c>chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/tmp</c>. This
also holds for <path>/var/tmp</path>.
</note>

<p>
We will also have to mount the proc filesystem (a virtual interface with the 
kernel) on <path>/proc</path>. But first we will need to place our files on the partitions.
</p>

<p>
Continue with <uri link="?part=1&amp;chap=5">Installing the Gentoo
Installation Files</uri>.
</p>

</body>
</section>
</sections>
1	<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
2	<!DOCTYPE sections SYSTEM "/dtd/book.dtd">
3
4	<!-- The content of this document is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license -->
5	<!-- See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5 -->
6
7	<!-- $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/handbook/hb-install-ia64-disk.xml,v 1.15 2013/02/23 18:38:22 swift Exp $ -->
8
9	<sections>
10
11	<version>11</version>
12	<date>2013-12-17</date>
13
14	<section>
15	<title>Introduction to Block Devices</title>
16
17	<subsection>
18	<include href="hb-install-blockdevices.xml"/>
19	</subsection>
20
21	<subsection>
22	<title>Partitions</title>
23	<body>
24
25	<p>
26	Although it is theoretically possible to use a full disk to house your Linux
27	system, this is almost never done in practice. Instead, full disk block devices
28	are split up in smaller, more manageable block devices. On <keyval id="arch"/>
29	systems, these are called <e>partitions</e>.
30	</p>
31
32	<p>
33	Itanium systems use EFI, the Extensible Firmware Interface, for booting. The
34	partition table format that EFI understands is called GPT, or GUID Partition
35	Table. The partitioning program that understands GPT is called "parted", so
36	that is the tool we will use below. Additionally, EFI can only read FAT
37	filesystems, so that is the format to use for the EFI boot partition, where the
38	kernel will be installed by "elilo".
39	</p>
40
41	</body>
42	</subsection>
43	<subsection>
44	<title>Advanced Storage</title>
45	<body>
46
47	<p>
48	The <keyval id="arch"/> Installation CDs provide support for LVM2.
49	LVM2 increases the flexibility offered by your partitioning setup.
50	During the installation instructions, we will focus on "regular" partitions,
51	but it is still good to know LVM2 is supported as well.
52	</p>
53
54	</body>
55	</subsection>
56	</section>
57	<section>
58	<title>Designing a Partitioning Scheme</title>
59	<subsection>
60	<title>Default Partitioning Scheme</title>
61	<body>
62
63	<p>
64	If you are not interested in drawing up a partitioning scheme for your system,
65	you can use the partitioning scheme we use throughout this book:
66	</p>
67
68	<table>
69	<tr>
70	<th>Partition</th>
71	<th>Filesystem</th>
72	<th>Size</th>
73	<th>Description</th>
74	</tr>
75	<tr>
76	<ti><path>/dev/sda1</path></ti>
77	<ti>vfat</ti>
78	<ti>32M</ti>
79	<ti>EFI Boot partition</ti>
80	</tr>
81	<tr>
82	<ti><path>/dev/sda2</path></ti>
83	<ti>(swap)</ti>
84	<ti>512M</ti>
85	<ti>Swap partition</ti>
86	</tr>
87	<tr>
88	<ti><path>/dev/sda3</path></ti>
89	<ti>ext4</ti>
90	<ti>Rest of the disk</ti>
91	<ti>Root partition</ti>
92	</tr>
93	</table>
94
95	<p>
96	If you are interested in knowing how big a partition should be, or even how
97	many partitions you need, read on. Otherwise continue now with partitioning
98	your disk by reading <uri link="#parted">Using parted to Partition your
99	Disk</uri>.
100	</p>
101
102	</body>
103	</subsection>
104	<subsection>
105	<title>How Many and How Big?</title>
106	<body>
107
108	<p>
109	The number of partitions is highly dependent on your environment. For instance,
110	if you have lots of users, you will most likely want to have your
111	<path>/home</path> separate as it increases security and makes backups easier.
112	If you are installing Gentoo to perform as a mailserver, your
113	<path>/var</path> should be separate as all mails are stored inside
114	<path>/var</path>. A good choice of filesystem will then maximise your
115	performance. Gameservers will have a separate <path>/opt</path> as most gaming
116	servers are installed there. The reason is similar for <path>/home</path>:
117	security and backups. You will definitely want to keep <path>/usr</path> big:
118	not only will it contain the majority of applications, the Portage tree alone
119	takes around 500 Mbyte excluding the various sources that are stored in it.
120	</p>
121
122	<p>
123	As you can see, it very much depends on what you want to achieve. Separate
124	partitions or volumes have the following advantages:
125	</p>
126
127	<ul>
128	<li>
129	You can choose the best performing filesystem for each partition or volume
130	</li>
131	<li>
132	Your entire system cannot run out of free space if one defunct tool is
133	continuously writing files to a partition or volume
134	</li>
135	<li>
136	If necessary, file system checks are reduced in time, as multiple checks can
137	be done in parallel (although this advantage is more with multiple disks than
138	it is with multiple partitions)
139	</li>
140	<li>
141	Security can be enhanced by mounting some partitions or volumes read-only,
142	nosuid (setuid bits are ignored), noexec (executable bits are ignored) etc.
143	</li>
144	</ul>
145
146	<p>
147	However, multiple partitions have disadvantages as well. If not configured
148	properly, you will have a system with lots of free space on one partition and
149	none on another. Another nuisance is that separate partitions - especially
150	for important mountpoints like <path>/usr</path> or <path>/var</path> - often
151	require the administrator to boot with an initramfs to mount the partition
152	before other boot scripts start. This isn't always the case though, so your
153	results may vary.
154	</p>
155
156	<p>
157	There is also a 15-partition limit for SCSI and SATA, unless you use GPT
158	labels.
159	</p>
160
161	<p>
162	As an example partitioning, we show you one for a 20GB disk, used as a
163	demonstration laptop (containing webserver, mailserver, gnome, ...):
164	</p>
165
166	<pre caption="Filesystem usage example">
167	$ <i>df -h</i>
168	Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
169	/dev/sda5 ext4 509M 132M 351M 28% /
170	/dev/sda2 ext4 5.0G 3.0G 1.8G 63% /home
171	/dev/sda7 ext4 7.9G 6.2G 1.3G 83% /usr
172	/dev/sda8 ext4 1011M 483M 477M 51% /opt
173	/dev/sda9 ext4 2.0G 607M 1.3G 32% /var
174	/dev/sda1 ext2 51M 17M 31M 36% /boot
175	/dev/sda6 swap 516M 12M 504M 2% <not mounted>
176	<comment>(Unpartitioned space for future usage: 2 GB)</comment>
177	</pre>
178
179	<p>
180	<path>/usr</path> is rather full (83% used) here, but once
181	all software is installed, <path>/usr</path> doesn't tend to grow that much.
182	Although allocating a few gigabytes of disk space for <path>/var</path> may
183	seem excessive, remember that Portage uses this partition by default for
184	compiling packages. If you want to keep <path>/var</path> at a more reasonable
185	size, such as 1GB, you will need to alter your <c>PORTAGE_TMPDIR</c> variable
186	in <path>/etc/portage/make.conf</path> to point to the partition with enough
187	free space for compiling extremely large packages such as LibreOffice.
188	</p>
189
190	</body>
191	</subsection>
192	</section>
193	<section id="parted">
194	<title>Using parted to Partition your Disk</title>
195	<subsection>
196	<body>
197
198	<p>
199	The following parts explain how to create the example partition layout
200	described previously, namely:
201	</p>
202
203	<table>
204	<tr>
205	<th>Partition</th>
206	<th>Description</th>
207	</tr>
208	<tr>
209	<ti><path>/dev/sda1</path></ti>
210	<ti>EFI Boot partition</ti>
211	</tr>
212	<tr>
213	<ti><path>/dev/sda2</path></ti>
214	<ti>Swap partition</ti>
215	</tr>
216	<tr>
217	<ti><path>/dev/sda3</path></ti>
218	<ti>Root partition</ti>
219	</tr>
220	</table>
221
222	<p>
223	Change your partition layout according to your own preference.
224	</p>
225
226	</body>
227	</subsection>
228	<subsection>
229	<title>Viewing the Current Partition Layout</title>
230	<body>
231
232	<p>
233	<c>parted</c> is the GNU partition editor.
234	Fire up <c>parted</c> on your disk (in our example, we use
235	<path>/dev/sda</path>):
236	</p>
237
238	<pre caption="Starting parted">
239	# <i>parted /dev/sda</i>
240	</pre>
241
242	<p>
243	Once in <c>parted</c>, you'll be greeted with a prompt that looks like this:
244	</p>
245
246	<pre caption="parted prompt">
247	GNU Parted 1.6.22
248	Copyright (C) 1998 - 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
249	This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.
250
251	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without
252	even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
253	General Public License for more details.
254
255	Using /dev/sda
256	(parted)
257	</pre>
258
259	<p>
260	At this point one of the available commands is <c>help</c>, which you should use
261	if you want to see the other available commands. Another command is
262	<c>print</c> which you should type next to display your disk's current partition
263	configuration:
264	</p>
265
266	<pre caption="An example partition configuration">
267	(parted) <i>print</i>
268	Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
269	Disk label type: gpt
270	Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
271	1 0.017 203.938 fat32 boot
272	2 203.938 4243.468 linux-swap
273	3 4243.469 34724.281 ext4
274	</pre>
275
276	<p>
277	This particular configuration is very similar to the one that we recommend
278	above. Note on the second line that the partition table is type is GPT. If it
279	is different, then the ia64 system will not be able to boot from this disk.
280	For the sake of this guide we'll remove the partitions and create them anew.
281	</p>
282
283	</body>
284	</subsection>
285	<subsection>
286	<title>Removing all Partitions</title>
287	<body>
288
289	<note>
290	Unlike fdisk and some other partitioning programs which postpone committing
291	changes until you give the write instruction, parted commands take effect
292	immediately. So once you start adding and removing partitions, you can't
293	simply quit without writing them... they've already been written.
294	</note>
295
296	<p>
297	The easy way to remove all partitions and start fresh, which guarantees that we
298	are using the correct partition type, is to make a new partition table using the
299	<c>mklabel</c> command. After you do this, you will have an empty GPT partition
300	table.
301	</p>
302
303	<pre caption="Creating a new partition table">
304	(parted) <i>mklabel gpt</i>
305	(parted) <i>print</i>
306	Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
307	Disk label type: gpt
308	Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
309	</pre>
310
311	<p>
312	Now that the partition table is empty, we're ready to create the
313	partitions. We will use a default partitioning scheme as discussed previously.
314	Of course, don't follow these instructions to the letter if you don't want the
315	same partitioning scheme!
316	</p>
317
318	</body>
319	</subsection>
320	<subsection>
321	<title>Creating the EFI Boot Partition</title>
322	<body>
323
324	<p>
325	We first create a small EFI boot partition. This is required to be a FAT
326	filesystem in order for the <keyval id="arch"/> firmware to read it. Our
327	example makes this 32 MB, which is appropriate for storing kernels and
328	<c>elilo</c> configuration. You can expect each <keyval id="arch"/> kernel to
329	be around 5 MB, so this configuration leaves you some room to grow and
330	experiment.
331	</p>
332
333	<pre caption="Creating the boot partition">
334	(parted) <i>mkpart primary fat32 0 32</i>
335	(parted) <i>print</i>
336	Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
337	Disk label type: gpt
338	Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
339	1 0.017 32.000 fat32
340	</pre>
341
342	</body>
343	</subsection>
344	<subsection>
345	<title>Creating the Swap Partition</title>
346	<body>
347
348	<p>
349	Let's now create the swap partition. The classic size to make the swap
350	partition was twice the amount of RAM in the system. In modern systems with
351	lots of RAM, this is no longer necessary. For most desktop systems, a 512
352	megabyte swap partition is sufficient. For a server, you should consider
353	something larger to reflect the anticipated needs of the server.
354	</p>
355
356	<pre caption="Creating the swap partition">
357	(parted) <i>mkpart primary linux-swap 32 544</i>
358	(parted) <i>print</i>
359	Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
360	Disk label type: gpt
361	Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
362	1 0.017 32.000 fat32
363	2 32.000 544.000
364	</pre>
365
366	</body>
367	</subsection>
368	<subsection>
369	<title>Creating the Root Partition</title>
370	<body>
371
372	<p>
373	Finally, let's create the root partition. Our configuration will make the root
374	partition to occupy the rest of the disk. We default to ext4, but you can use
375	ext2, jfs, reiserfs or xfs if you prefer. The actual filesystem is not created
376	in this step, but the partition table contains an indication of what kind of
377	filesystem is stored on each partition, and it's a good idea to make the table
378	match your intentions.
379	</p>
380
381	<pre caption="Creating the root partition">
382	(parted) <i>mkpart primary ext4 544 34732.890</i>
383	(parted) <i>print</i>
384	Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-34732.890 megabytes
385	Disk label type: gpt
386	Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
387	1 0.017 32.000 fat32
388	2 32.000 544.000
389	3 544.000 34732.874
390	</pre>
391
392	</body>
393	</subsection>
394	<subsection>
395	<title>Exiting parted</title>
396	<body>
397
398	<p>
399	To quit from parted, type <c>quit</c>. There's no need to take a separate step
400	to save your partition layout since parted has been saving it all along. As you
401	leave, parted gives you reminder to update your <c>/etc/fstab</c>, which we'll
402	do later in this guide.
403	</p>
404
405	<pre caption="Quit from parted">
406	(parted) <i>quit</i>
407	Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.
408	</pre>
409
410	<p>
411	Now that your partitions are created, you can continue with <uri
412	link="#filesystems">Creating Filesystems</uri>.
413	</p>
414
415	</body>
416	</subsection>
417	</section>
418	<section id="filesystems">
419	<title>Creating Filesystems</title>
420	<subsection>
421	<title>Introduction</title>
422	<body>
423
424	<p>
425	Now that your partitions are created, it is time to place a filesystem on them.
426	If you don't care about what filesystem to choose and are happy with what we use
427	as default in this handbook, continue with <uri
428	link="#filesystems-apply">Applying a Filesystem to a Partition</uri>.
429	Otherwise read on to learn about the available filesystems...
430	</p>
431
432	</body>
433	</subsection>
434
435	<subsection>
436	<include href="hb-install-filesystems.xml"/>
437	</subsection>
438
439	<subsection id="filesystems-apply">
440	<title>Applying a Filesystem to a Partition</title>
441	<body>
442
443	<p>
444	To create a filesystem on a partition or volume, there are tools available for
445	each possible filesystem:
446	</p>
447
448	<table>
449	<tr>
450	<th>Filesystem</th>
451	<th>Creation Command</th>
452	</tr>
453	<tr>
454	<ti>vfat</ti>
455	<ti><c>mkdosfs</c></ti>
456	</tr>
457	<tr>
458	<ti>ext2</ti>
459	<ti><c>mkfs.ext2</c></ti>
460	</tr>
461	<tr>
462	<ti>ext3</ti>
463	<ti><c>mkfs.ext3</c></ti>
464	</tr>
465	<tr>
466	<ti>ext4</ti>
467	<ti><c>mkfs.ext4</c></ti>
468	</tr>
469	<tr>
470	<ti>reiserfs</ti>
471	<ti><c>mkreiserfs</c></ti>
472	</tr>
473	<tr>
474	<ti>xfs</ti>
475	<ti><c>mkfs.xfs</c></ti>
476	</tr>
477	<tr>
478	<ti>jfs</ti>
479	<ti><c>mkfs.jfs</c></ti>
480	</tr>
481	</table>
482
483	<p>
484	For instance, to have the boot partition (<path>/dev/sda1</path> in our
485	example) as vfat and the root partition (<path>/dev/sda3</path> in our example)
486	as ext4, you would run the following commands:
487	</p>
488
489	<pre caption="Applying a filesystem on a partition">
490	# <i>mkdosfs /dev/sda1</i>
491	# <i>mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3</i>
492	</pre>
493
494	</body>
495	</subsection>
496	<subsection>
497	<title>Activating the Swap Partition</title>
498	<body>
499
500	<p>
501	<c>mkswap</c> is the command that is used to initialize swap partitions:
502	</p>
503
504	<pre caption="Creating a Swap signature">
505	# <i>mkswap /dev/sda2</i>
506	</pre>
507
508	<p>
509	To activate the swap partition, use <c>swapon</c>:
510	</p>
511
512	<pre caption="Activating the swap partition">
513	# <i>swapon /dev/sda2</i>
514	</pre>
515
516	<p>
517	Create and activate the swap with the commands mentioned above.
518	</p>
519
520	</body>
521	</subsection>
522	</section>
523	<section>
524	<title>Mounting</title>
525	<body>
526
527	<p>
528	Now that your partitions are initialized and are housing a filesystem, it is
529	time to mount those partitions. Use the <c>mount</c> command. Don't forget to
530	create the necessary mount directories for every partition you created. As an
531	example we mount the root and boot partition:
532	</p>
533
534	<pre caption="Mounting the root partition">
535	# <i>mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo</i>
536	</pre>
537
538	<note>
539	Unlike some of the other architectures supported by Gentoo, <path>/boot</path>
540	is not mounted on ia64. The reason for this is that the EFI boot partition will
541	be automatically mounted and written by the <c>elilo</c> command each time that
542	you run it. Because of this, <path>/boot</path> resides on the root filesystem
543	and is the storage place for the kernels referenced by your <c>elilo</c>
544	configuration.
545	</note>
546
547	<note>
548	If you want your <path>/tmp</path> to reside on a separate partition, be sure to
549	change its permissions after mounting: <c>chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/tmp</c>. This
550	also holds for <path>/var/tmp</path>.
551	</note>
552
553	<p>
554	We will also have to mount the proc filesystem (a virtual interface with the
555	kernel) on <path>/proc</path>. But first we will need to place our files on the partitions.
556	</p>
557
558	<p>
559	Continue with <uri link="?part=1&chap=5">Installing the Gentoo
560	Installation Files</uri>.
561	</p>
562
563	</body>
564	</section>
565	</sections>