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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
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be deleted before partman 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), it is suggested that you do
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<emphasis>not</emphasis> make the third partition contain the whole
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disk. This is not required by <command>aboot</command>, and in fact,
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it may lead to confusion since the <command>swriteboot</command>
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utility used to install <command>aboot</command> in the boot sector
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will complain about a partition overlapping with the boot block.
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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.