Newbie question - filesystem

[Tim Medford]

I'm an experienced HPUX sysadm trying to learn Redhat Fedora Core2 Linux in a hurry. I apologize in advance for asking such a basic question.

When I installed linux I used disk druid and partitioned the disk according to some guidelines I read. Now everything is installed and running fine. All I'm trying to do is setup a new filesystem that I can load Oracle into.

I don't have a clue how to do this after the fact. I cannot seem find or run disk druid again, is that a setup-only thing?

Here is what my single IDE disk looks like now.

(fedora)/root> df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 1035692 253708 729372 26% /
/dev/hda1 101086 8368 87499 9% /boot
none 1033996 0 1033996 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5 5036284 32868 4747584 1% /home
/dev/hda6 10072456 3569288 5991500 38% /usr
/dev/hda7 1035660 629492 353560 65% /var
/dev/hdc 653076 653076 0 100% /mnt/cdrom
(fedora)/root> fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 144 1052257+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 145 653 4088542+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 654 4865 33832890 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 654 1290 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 1291 2564 10233373+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 2565 2695 1052226 83 Linux

I can see that I have roughly 30gb free in /dev/hda4, but I'm not sure if I can just stick a filesystem on it and use that partition? Do I need to create a new partition for Oracle and then create the filesystem?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tim

[Steven E. Protter]

If the partition has space and you have not run newfs/makefs then you should be able to create a filesystem that way.

Depends on whether you want to run oracle in raw disk space or not.

SEP

[Tim Medford]

Thanks Steven.

What's confusing me is that I'm thinking from /dev/hda4 and on, those are just "logical" partitions. I wasn't sure if I would wipe out hda5,6,7 if I put a file system right on 4?

The starting block number on /dev/hda4 and hda5 is the same?

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

You don't have 30 GB free.

/dev/hda4 is an extended partition. In this partition you have logical units.

hda5 hda6 hda7 are logical units created IN the hda4 extended partition.

So, 33 GB is your extended partition, and you are using about 16 GB for hda5 hda6 and hda7.

Disk druid is not available after the installation, you need to partition the disk using fdisk or parted.

Using fdisk:

fdisk /dev/hda
n (new)
Initial block, accept default
Final block or size, specify the size in MB, like this:

5000M

To create a 5 GB logical unit.

Then use

w

To save the changes, you should reboot.

Then use

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda8

To create the filesystem, then edit /etc/fstab.

Use tune2fs -i 0 -c 0 -m 0 /dev/hda8.

[dirk dierickx]

you can also have volumes or mirrors/raid configurations, not to speak of a bunch of filesystem supported by linux. you can find a very extended overview and reference here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Filesystems-HOWTO.html