format part of disk/repartition?

mrburrito00 · 09-26-2002, 03:07 PM

hi,

when i installed redhat on this box, i was told to only format part of the 120GB drive that i had with the understanding that i could format the rest and repartition later. looking back now, i should have just formatted the entire thing. i was wondering if anyone could help me format the unformatted sections of my drive and then partition it.

here is what sfdisk -l produces:

Disk /dev/hdc: 232581 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 516096 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 0+ 101 102- 51376+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 102 15339 15238 7679952 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 15340 19402 4063 2047752 83 Linux
/dev/hdc4 19403 232580 213178 107441712 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdc5 19403+ 23466 4064- 2048224+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 23467+ 26514 3048- 1536160+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc7 26515+ 28038 1524- 768064+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc8 28039+ 29078 1040- 524128+ 82 Linux swap

can someone point me in the right direction? thanks in advance!

Mara · 09-26-2002, 03:56 PM

First you need to create partitions. You format them, when they're created.
To create a partition you can use fdisk or any other, similar utility coming with your distro. When a partition is created use
mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdc9
Note that it's a good idea to check 3 times if the partition you have in mkfs command line is the one you'd like to format!

mrburrito00 · 09-27-2002, 04:12 PM

cool - thanks for the help.

i have one more question. i need to "add" to the size of my /tmp dir. i heard that i cant really add to to the size of that partition w/o something like partition magic, but that i should create a new partition and then mount it as tmp?

so do i just create a new partition. umount the old one and mount it as /tmp2 or something. then format and mount the new partition as /tmp and then copy any/all files from /tmp2 to /tmp?

thanks again

Mara · 09-28-2002, 01:26 PM

You've got 2 options:
1) You can resize your current /tmp using parted. It's easier when after the /tmp partition there's free space or a partition you'd like to make smaller.
2) You can create a new partition, mount it somewhere, format it, copy all the data and change /tmp entry in fstab to point to the new partition. After reboot new /tmp will be used and you can do everything with the new one (for example add its space to your /home partition if you wish).