Primary and extended partitions for SUSE Linux 10

In this section, we start with a clean disk to create the partitions needed to install SUSE Linux 10. If you want to remove the partitions on an existing installation of an operating system, select the partition and press the Delete button. You will be asked to confirm this, and the partition will be removed.

If you select Create, you are prompted for the type of partition you want to create (see Figure 1-11). In the PC world, the BIOS can access only four primary partitions. These can be thought of as four physical boundaries on the disk, with separate data and filesystems on each. With Linux enterprise, you need at least two partitions, and if you have Windows on another partition, and a data or home disk on the other, you may quickly run out of ways to expand the way your disk is laid out. To combat this, logical and extended partitions were designed. An extended partition is a placeholder for further logical partitions, and it is a good idea to create one extended partition (which takes up one of your primary partitions) and create logical partitions to accommodate further partitioning schemes in the future.


Figure 1-11

The most common way to partition disks for home Linux enterprise boxes use is to have one primary partition for the Linux root partition, a second primary partition for the swap partition, and then an extended partition for any other (logical) partitions that may be needed. Using extended and logical partitions grows

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the amount of total partitions you can have in a system to 16, which is usually more than enough.

Select the Primary partition option and click OK to proceed.


Customizing your SUSE Linux 10 installation

 Home: Introduction
 Step 1: Partitioning Your Disks
 Step 2: Resizing Existing Operating Systems Partitions
 Step 3: Primary and Extended Partitions
 Step 4: Defining Filesystems
 Step 5: The root partition
 Step 6: Data Partitions
 Step 7: Selecting Software for Installation
 Step 8: Selecting a Boot Loader
 Step 9: Changing the Default Runlevel

The above tip is excerpted from from Chapter 1, "Installing SUSE 10" our original excerpt of The SUSE Linux 10 Bible by Justin Davies, courtesy of Wiley Publishing. This chapter explains how to successfully install SUSE Linux 10 on your box. Find it helpful? Buy it on Amazon.

This was first published in September 2006

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