Section 3.10:Partitioning Your System 39
• Size (Megs): Enter the size (in megabytes) of the partition. Note this field starts with a "1" in it;
unless changed you will end up with a 1 MB partition.
•
Additional Size Options: Choose whether to keep this partition at a fixed size, to allow it to
"grow" (fill up the available hard drive space) to a certain point, or to allow it to grow to fill any
remaining hard drive space available.
If you choose
Fill all space up to (MB)
, you must give size constraints in the field to the right of
this option. This allows you to keep a certain amount of space free on your hard drive for future
use.
•
Force to be a primary partition: Select whether the partition you are creating should be one
of the first four partitions on the hard drive. If unselected, the partition created will be a logical
partition. See Section E.1.3, Partitions within Partitions -- An Overview of Extended Partitions for
more information.
•
Check for bad blocks
: Checking for bad blocks can help prevent data loss by locating the bad
blocks on a drive and making a list of them to prevent using them in the future. If you wish to
check for bad blocks while formatting each filesystem, please make sure to select this option.
Selecting
Check for bad blocks maydramatically increase your total installation time. Since most
newer hard drives are quite large in size, checking for bad blocks may take a long time; the length
of time depends on the size of your hard drive. If you choose to check for bad blocks, you can
monitor your progress on virtual console #6.
•
Ok: Select Ok once you are satisfied with the settings and wish to create the partition.
•
Cancel: Select Cancel if you do not want to create the partition.
Filesystem Types
Red Hat Linux 7.2 allows you to create different types of partition types, based on the filesystem they
will use. The following is a brief description of the different filesystems available, and how they can
be utilized.
•
ext2 — An ext2 filesystem supports standard Unix file types (regular files, directories, symbolic
links, etc). It provides the ability to assign long file names, up to 255 characters. Versions prior to
Red Hat Linux 7.2 used ext2 filesystems by default.
•
ext3
— The ext3 filesystem is based on the ext2 filesystem and has one main advantage — jour-
naling. Using a journaling filesystem reduces time spent recovering a filesystem after a crash as
there is no need to fsck
1
the filesystem.
1
The fsck application is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux filesystems.
