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<title>Partitioning Your Disks</title>
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Now it is time to partition your disks. If you are uncomfortable with
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partitioning, or just want to know more details, see <xref
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linkend="partitioning"/>.
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First you will be given the opportunity to automatically partition
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either an entire drive, or free space on a drive. This is also called
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<quote>guided</quote> partitioning. If you do not want to
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autopartition, choose <guimenuitem>Manually edit partition
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table</guimenuitem> from the menu.
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If you choose guided partitioning, you will be able to choose from the
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schemes listed in the table below. All schemes have their pros and cons,
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some of which are discussed in <xref linkend="partitioning"/>. If you are
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unsure, choose the first one. Bear in mind, that guided partitioning
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needs certain minimal amount of free space to operate with. If you don't
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give it at least about 1GB of space (depends on chosen scheme), guided
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partitioning will fail.
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<entry>Partitioning scheme</entry>
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<entry>Minimum space</entry>
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<entry>Created partitions</entry>
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<entry>All files in one partition</entry>
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<entry><filename>/</filename>, swap</entry>
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<entry>Desktop machine</entry>
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<filename>/</filename>, <filename>/home</filename>, swap
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<entry>Multi-user workstation</entry>
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<filename>/</filename>, <filename>/home</filename>,
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<filename>/usr</filename>, <filename>/var</filename>,
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<filename>/tmp</filename>, swap
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</tbody></tgroup></informaltable>
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If you chose an automatic partitioning for your IA64 system, there
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will be an additional partition, formatted as a FAT16 bootable filesystem,
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for the EFI boot loader.
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There is also an additional menu item in the formatting menu to manually
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set up a partition as an EFI boot partition.
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</para><para arch="alpha">
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If you chose an automatic partitioning for your Alpha system, an
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additional, unformatted partition will be allocated at the beginning of
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your disk to reserve this space for the aboot boot loader.
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After selecting a scheme, the next screen will show your new partition
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table, including information on whether and how partitions will be
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formatted and where they will be mounted.
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The list of partitions might look like this:
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<!-- TODO: show some flags here (lightning, skull, smiley) -->
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<informalexample><screen>
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IDE1 master (hda) - 6.4 GB WDC AC36400L
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#1 primary 16.4 MB ext2 /boot
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#2 primary 551.0 MB swap swap
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#3 primary 5.8 GB ntfs
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pri/log 8.2 MB FREE SPACE
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IDE1 slave (hdb) - 80.0 GB ST380021A
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#1 primary 15.9 MB ext3
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#2 primary 996.0 MB fat16
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#3 primary 3.9 GB xfs /home
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#5 logical 6.0 GB ext3 /
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#6 logical 1.0 GB ext3 /var
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#7 logical 498.8 MB ext3
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#8 logical 551.5 MB swap swap
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#9 logical 65.8 GB ext2
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</screen></informalexample>
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This example shows two IDE harddrives divided into several partitions;
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the first disk has some free space. Each partition line consists of the
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partition number, its type, size, optional flags, file system, and
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This concludes the guided partitioning. If you are satisfied with the
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generated partition table, you can choose <guimenuitem>Finish
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partitioning and write changes to disk</guimenuitem> from the menu to
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implement the new partition table (as described at the end of this
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section). If you are not happy, you can choose to <guimenuitem>Undo
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changes to partitions</guimenuitem>, to run guided partitioning again
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or modify the proposed changes as described below for manual partitioning.
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A similar screen to the one shown just above will be displayed if you
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choose manual partitioning except that your existing partition table will
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be shown and without the mount points. How to manually setup your partition
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table and the usage of partitions by your new Debian system will be covered
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in the remainder of this section.
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If you select a pristine disk which doesn't have neither partitions
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nor free space on it, you will be offered to create a new partition
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table (this is needed so you can create new partitions). After this
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a new line entitled <quote>FREE SPACE</quote> should appear under the
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If you select some free space, you will be offered to create new
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partition. You will have to answer a quick series of questions about
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its size, type (primary or logical), and location (beginning or end of
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the free space). After this, you will be presented with detailed
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overview of your new partition. There are options like mountpoint,
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mount options, bootable flag, or way of usage. If you don't like the
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preselected defaults, feel free to change them to your liking. E.g. by
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selecting the option <guimenuitem>Use as:</guimenuitem>, you can
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choose different filesystem for this partition including the
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possibility to use the partition for swap, software RAID, LVM, or not
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use it at all. Other nice feature is the possibility to copy data from
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existing partition onto this one.
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When you are satisfied with your new partition, select
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<guimenuitem>Done setting up the partition</guimenuitem> and you will be
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thrown back to the <command>partman</command>'s main screen.
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If you decide you want to change something about your partition,
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simply select the partition, which will bring you to the partition
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configuration menu. Because this is the same screen like when creating
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a new partition, you can change the same set of options. One thing
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which might not be very obvious at a first glance is that you can
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resize the partition by selecting the item displaying the size of the
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partition. Filesystems known to work are at least fat16, fat32, ext2,
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ext3 and swap. This menu also allows you to delete a partition.
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Be sure to create at least two partitions: one for the
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<emphasis>root</emphasis> filesystem (which must be mounted as
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<filename>/</filename>) and one for <emphasis>swap</emphasis>. If you
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forget to mount the root filesystem, <command>partman</command> won't
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let you continue until you correct this issue.
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</para><para arch="ia64">
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If you forget to select and format an EFI boot partition
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<command>partman</command> will detect this and will not let you continue
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until you allocate one.
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Capabilities of <command>partman</command> can be extended with installer
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modules, but are dependent on your system's architecture. So if you can't
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see all promised goodies, check if you have loaded all required modules
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(e.g. <filename>partman-ext3</filename>, <filename>partman-xfs</filename>,
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or <filename>partman-lvm</filename>).
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After you are satisfied with partitioning, select <guimenuitem>Finish
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partitioning and write changes to disk</guimenuitem> from the partitioning
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menu. You will be presented with a summary of changes made to the disks
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and asked to confirm that the filesystems should be created as requested.