13.2. Creating a Partition
Warning
Do not attempt to create a partition on a device that is in use.
Procedure 13.1. Creating a partition
- Before creating a partition, boot into rescue mode (or unmount any partitions on the device and turn off any swap space on the device).
- Start
parted, where/dev/sdais the device on which to create the partition:# parted /dev/sda - View the current partition table to determine if there is enough free space:
# print
If there is not enough free space, you can resize an existing partition. Refer to Section 13.4, “Resizing a Partition” for details.
13.2.1. Making the Partition
From the partition table, determine the start and end points of the new partition and what partition type it should be. You can only have four primary partitions (with no extended partition) on a device. If you need more than four partitions, you can have three primary partitions, one extended partition, and multiple logical partitions within the extended. For an overview of disk partitions, refer to the appendix An Introduction to Disk Partitions in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Installation Guide.
For example, to create a primary partition with an ext3 file system from 1024 megabytes until 2048 megabytes on a hard drive type the following command:
# mkpart primary ext3 1024 2048Note
If you use the
mkpartfs command instead, the file system is created after the partition is created. However, parted does not support creating an ext3 file system. Thus, if you wish to create an ext3 file system, use mkpart and create the file system with the mkfs command as described later.
The changes start taking place as soon as you press Enter, so review the command before executing to it.
After creating the partition, use the
print command to confirm that it is in the partition table with the correct partition type, file system type, and size. Also remember the minor number of the new partition so that you can label any file systems on it. You should also view the output of cat /proc/partitions after parted is closed to make sure the kernel recognizes the new partition.
The maximum number of partitions parted will create is 128. While the GUID Partition Table (GPT) specification allows for more partitions by growing the area reserved for the partition table, common practice used by parted is to limit it to enough area for 128 partitions.
