How to create a multiple partition system

This actually isn't that likely unless you intentionally left space for that 1GB, because most people just fill up their hard drives. That's understandable, but I tend to leave that space unused now in case something like this happens, because having that free space is a LOT easier to deal with than not.

So, assuming you do have 1GB of unpartitioned space on your drive, all you have to do is this:

Now I'm ready to mount our new partition. The one for my example is /dev/hdb14, though yours may be different. The mount command is:

mount <partition> /mnt/

so, for me that would be:

mount /dev/hdb14 /mnt/src 

There are no real messages indicating success here, so I like to check and make sure that the partition mounted right by doing a df:

[root@half-life ddipaolo]# df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb8              1052256    165140    834504  17% /
/dev/hda1              1023312    790016    233296  77% /dos/C
/dev/hda5              4511512   3381464   1130048  75% /dos/D
/dev/hda6              4408896   3674860    734036  83% /dos/E
/dev/hdb5              2038504   1364400    568880  71% /home
/dev/hdb7               202225       247    191536   0% /tmp
/dev/hdb11             2071384   1504896    461264  77% /usr
/dev/hdb12             2071384    125472   1840688   6% /usr/local
/dev/hdb6               248894     12295    223748   5% /var
/dev/hdb14             1035660         4    983048   0% /mnt/src

Where is the full path (and not just the deepeest subdirectory) of the partition you wanted to create. In my example, I would issue:

cp -R /usr/src /mnt

I do this because it automatically copies it into /mnt/src. I'm not exactly sure why it does, but as long as I'm consistent then this works wonderfully.

This copy can take a long time, depending upon how much data you are transferring and how fast your hard drive and system are.

Try not to do too much while the copy is happening, otherwise it might just end up taking longer. But once that is done, you can check that the copy went okay by using the du command again:

[root@half-life src]# cp -Rf /usr/src /mnt
[root@half-life src]# du -s -H /usr/src
316M    /usr/src
[root@half-life src]# du -s -H /mnt/src
316M    /mnt/src

Looks kinda hairy, huh? Well, it's not too bad, really. Just notice that a lot of the things are the same from column to column. Basically, you've got these five (well, six) columns:

Partition - this first one describes what partition is being mounted (or is to be mounted at boot, more precisely)

Mount point - this shows where on the Linux filesystem this partition will be mounted

Filesystem type - specifies what filesystem has been created on that partition or 'auto' to use auto-detection

Options - I've had no use to use anything but defaults, though I've heard of people having issues writing to their mounted Windows partitions as normal users when using "defaults" for their options. I simply never write to my Windows partition except as root, and defaults works fine.

Dumps/Fscks (last two columns) - This has to do with filesystem dumps, fscks, and priorities. For the most part, you can just use the values "1 2" and you'll be fine.

So, like I said, nothing to it. It's basically a cut and paste job. So, to put our new partition with filesystem at /usr/src, let's run down what should go in each column:

Partition - /dev/hdb14 (in my case)
Mount point - /usr/src (again, my case)
Filesystem - ext2
Options - defaults
Dumps - 1 2

So, if you string them all together you get:

/dev/hdb14         /usr/src        ext2    defaults        1 2 

Heck you don't even have to use a text editor to add this one. You can use echo:

echo "/dev/hdb14 /usr/src ext2 defaults 1 2" >> /etc/fstab

Make sure you use >> and not > though. Otherwise you are in serious trouble unless you made a backup.

Now, you know how to do this when you have space to make the partition. Let's look at what's different for when you DON'T have the space to make the partition you want.