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<sect1 id="non-debian-partitioning">
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<title>Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems</title>
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Partitioning your disk simply refers to the act of breaking up your
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disk into sections. Each section is then independent of the others.
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It's roughly equivalent to putting up walls inside a house; if you add
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furniture to one room it doesn't affect any other room.
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</para><para arch="s390">
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Whenever this section talks about <quote>disks</quote> you should translate
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this into a DASD or VM minidisk in the &arch-title; world. Also a machine
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means an LPAR or VM guest in this case.
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If you already have an operating system on your system
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(Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000/XP, OS/2, MacOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, …)
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(Tru64 (Digital UNIX), OpenVMS, Windows NT, FreeBSD, …)
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(VM, z/OS, OS/390, …)
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(Amiga OS, Atari TOS, Mac OS, …)
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and want to stick Linux on the same disk, you will need to repartition
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the disk. Debian requires its own hard disk partitions. It cannot be
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installed on Windows or MacOS partitions. It may be able to share some
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partitions with other Linux systems, but that's not covered here. At
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the very least you will need a dedicated partition for the Debian
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You can find information about your current partition setup by using
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a partitioning tool for your current operating system<phrase
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arch="i386">, such as fdisk or PartitionMagic</phrase><phrase
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arch="powerpc">, such as Drive Setup, HD Toolkit, or MacTools</phrase><phrase
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arch="m68k">, such as HD SC Setup, HDToolBox, or SCSITool</phrase><phrase
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arch="s390">, such as the VM diskmap</phrase>. Partitioning tools always
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provide a way to show existing partitions without making changes.
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In general, changing a partition with a file system already on
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it will destroy any information there. Thus you should always make
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backups before doing any repartitioning. Using the analogy of the
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house, you would probably want to move all the furniture out of the
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way before moving a wall or you risk destroying it.
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</para><para arch="hppa" condition="FIXME">
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<emphasis>FIXME: write about HP-UX disks?</emphasis>
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If your computer has more than one hard disk, you may want to dedicate
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one of the hard disks completely to Debian. If so, you don't need to
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partition that disk before booting the installation system; the
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installer's included partitioning program can handle the job nicely.
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If your machine has only one hard disk, and you would like to
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completely replace the current operating system with &debian;,
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you also can wait to partition as part of the installation process
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(<xref linkend="partman"/>), after you have booted the
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installation system. However this only works if you plan to boot the
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installer system from tapes, CD-ROM or files on a connected machine.
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Consider: if you boot from files placed on the hard disk, and then
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partition that same hard disk within the installation system, thus
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erasing the boot files, you'd better hope the installation is
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successful the first time around. At the least in this case, you
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should have some alternate means of reviving your machine like the
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original system's installation tapes or CDs.
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If your machine already has multiple partitions, and enough space can
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be provided by deleting and replacing one or more of them, then you
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too can wait and use the Debian installer's partitioning program. You
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should still read through the material below, because there may be
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special circumstances like the order of the existing partitions within
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the partition map, that force you to partition before installing
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</para><para arch="i386">
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If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows,
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you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to
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resize the filesystem.
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If none of the above apply, you'll need to partition your hard disk before
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starting the installation to create partition-able space for
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Debian. If some of the partitions will be owned by other operating
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systems, you should create those partitions using native operating
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system partitioning programs. We recommend that you do
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<emphasis>not</emphasis> attempt to create partitions for &debian;
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using another operating system's tools. Instead, you should just
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create the native operating system's partitions you will want to
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If you are going to install more than one operating system on the same
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machine, you should install all other system(s) before proceeding with
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Linux installation. Windows and other OS installations may destroy
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your ability to start Linux, or encourage you to reformat non-native
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You can recover from these actions or avoid them, but installing
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the native system first saves you trouble.
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</para><para arch="powerpc">
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In order for OpenFirmware to automatically boot &debian; the Linux
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partitions should appear before all other partitions on the disk,
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especially MacOS boot partitions. This should be kept in mind when
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pre-partitioning; you should create a Linux placeholder partition to
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come <emphasis>before</emphasis> the other bootable partitions on the
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disk. (The small partitions dedicated to Apple disk drivers are not
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bootable.) You can delete the placeholder with the Linux partition
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tools later during the actual install, and replace it with Linux
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If you currently have one hard disk with one partition (a common setup
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for desktop computers), and you want to multi-boot the native
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operating system and Debian, you will need to:
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Back up everything on the computer.
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Boot from the native operating system installer media such as CD-ROM
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<phrase arch="powerpc">When booting from a MacOS CD, hold the
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<keycap>c</keycap> key while
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booting to force the CD to become the active MacOS system.</phrase>
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Use the native partitioning tools to create native system
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partition(s). Leave either a place holder partition or free space for
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Install the native operating system on its new partition.
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Boot back into the native system to verify everything's OK,
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and to download the Debian installer boot files.
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Boot the Debian installer to continue installing Debian.
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&nondeb-part-alpha.xml;
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&nondeb-part-i386.xml;
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&nondeb-part-m68k.xml;
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&nondeb-part-sparc.xml;
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&nondeb-part-powerpc.xml;