Adding Partitions using fdisk

Make sure there is free space on the drive. 'p' will display a listing of the current partition table, 'd' will allow you to delete partitions. 'm' will provide a list of available commands.

First, you will create an extended partition for your Linux Partitions to live in. If you already have an extended partition, skip this step. Type 'n' to create a new partition. Type 'e' to create an extended partition. Specify a free partition number for your extended partition-consult the output of the 'p' command to determine a which partition(s) in the range 1-4 are unused. Fdisk will now present you with a range of values for First cylinder. Type the first number of the range to start at the beginning of free space, or another cylinder number to start somewhere else on the disk. Fdisk will now present you with a range of values for Last cylinder. Type the second number from the range to make the partition all the way to the end of the disk, or use one of the other options to customize the partition size.

You are now ready to create Logical partitions inside of the Extended partition. Type 'n' to create a new partition, then 'l' to specify logical partition. Start at the first available cylinder, and use +60M (for example) to create a 60MB partition. This will be your Swap partition. Type 't' to change partition type, then the number of the partition you just created to select it. Linux Swap is type 82.

Now create any other partitions you need. Type 'n' to create a new partition, 'l' to specify logical partition. Start at the first available cylinder, and specify appropriate ending cylinders. You'll probably want to specify your last partition to end at the last cylinder of the disk, so you don't waste any space. Repeat this for as many partitions as you need.

Type 'p' to display a listing of your partition table. If you are happy with what you see, type 'w' to write your changes to disk. If you want to start over, type 'q' to return to the installer.

An example of a working partition table from a system that dual boots DOS and Linux on a 1GB disk is:

	Disk /tmp/hda: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 528 cylinders
	Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes

	   Device Boot    Start      End   Blocks   Id  System
	/tmp/hda1   *         1       51   102784+   6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
	/tmp/hda4            52      528   961632    5  Extended
	/tmp/hda5            52       82    62464+  82  Linux swap
	/tmp/hda6            83      528   899104+  83  Linux native

Now that you are back to the installer, select "Done" to proceed to the next step. Specify mount points for each of the partitions you want Linux to see using the "Edit" button. Select "OK".