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<!-- $Id: alpha.xml 39920 2006-08-17 17:52:44Z fjp $ -->
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<sect2 arch="alpha"><title>Partitioning for &arch-title;</title>
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Booting Debian from the SRM console (the only disk boot method supported
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by &releasename;) requires you to have a BSD disk label, not a DOS
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partition table, on your boot disk. (Remember, the SRM boot block is
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incompatible with MS-DOS partition tables — see
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<xref linkend="alpha-firmware"/>.) As a result, <command>partman</command>
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creates BSD disk labels when running on &architecture;, but if your disk
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has an existing DOS partition table the existing partitions will need to be
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deleted before <command>partman</command> can convert it to use a disk label.
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If you have chosen to use <command>fdisk</command> to partition your
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disk, and the disk that you have selected for partitioning does not
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already contain a BSD disk label, you must use the <quote>b</quote>
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command to enter disk label mode.
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Unless you wish to use the disk you are partitioning from Tru64 Unix
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or one of the free 4.4BSD-Lite derived operating systems (FreeBSD,
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OpenBSD, or NetBSD), you should <emphasis>not</emphasis> create the
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third partition as a <quote>whole disk</quote> partition (i.e. with
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start and end sectors to span the whole disk), as this renders the
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disk incompatible with the tools used to make it bootable with aboot.
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This means that the disk configured by the installer for use as the
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Debian boot disk will be inaccessible to the operating systems mentioned
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Also, because <command>aboot</command> is written to the first few
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sectors of the disk (currently it occupies about 70 kilobytes, or 150
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sectors), you <emphasis>must</emphasis> leave enough empty space at
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the beginning of the disk for it. In the past, it was suggested that
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you make a small partition at the beginning of the disk, to be left
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unformatted. For the same reason mentioned above, we now suggest that
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you do not do this on disks that will only be used by GNU/Linux. When
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using <command>partman</command>, a small partition will still be
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created for <command>aboot</command> for convenience reasons.
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</para><para condition="FIXME">
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For ARC installations, you should make a small FAT partition at the
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beginning of the disk to contain <command>MILO</command> and
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<command>linload.exe</command> — 5 megabytes should be sufficient, see
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<xref linkend="non-debian-partitioning"/>. Unfortunately, making FAT
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file systems from the menu is not yet supported, so you'll have to do
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it manually from the shell using <command>mkdosfs</command> before
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attempting to install the boot loader.