manually partition disk during installation

[Tonatiuh]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 2 AS.

I want to install but particion manually with 'fdisk' the disk, and just use that manually created and formated partitions into the installation process.

I tryed to use Alt+F2 durin the Linux text installation but it not responds (does not change to the shell where I can use the fdisk command).

Any idea about how to do this?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

during installation, you are really better off using disk druid.

What you can do though is boot off a rescue disk, partition to your hearts delight with fdisk and then just use disk druid to edit the mount point names at install time.

SEP

[Ivan Ferreira]

I usually won't disagree with SEP but today I will. I prefer the use of fdisk for partitioning disks during installation. Specially, when software RAID is involved (exact partition sizes using cyliners and so on).

You can go to the console after started the installation process. Normally, I continue the installation and when the "Partition disk" screen is reached, I change to the virtual console and partition the disks with "fdisk". Then continue with disk druid and will read your table created with fdisk. You then can modify the paritions to indicate the mount point and fs type.

Remember to mark a partition as active and that the active partition must be a primary partition.

[Tonatiuh]

Ivan, How do you change to the virtual console?

I fact Steven, this is because of a problem. You can see my other thread named: "boot problem" to see the complete picture.

Someone that have had similar problems recommended me to partition with fdisk instead of diskdruid, in this special case.