Gnome FDisk User's Guide
Dietmar Maurer
dm@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at
Copyright © 1998 by Dietmar Maurer
This documentation is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
For more details see the file COPYING in the source distribution of Gnome FDisk.
Chapter 1. Introduction
What is it?
gfdisk is a program for manipulation of hard disk partition tables (like fdisk or cfdisk).
The Linux Partition HOWTO, written by Kristan Koehntopp, provides a general introduction into hard disk partitioning and related topics.
DOS Partitions
Some DOS format commands looks for some information in the first sector of the data area of the partition, and treats this information as more reliable than the information in the partition table. DOS format expects DOS fdisk to clear the first 512 bytes of the data area of a partition whenever a size change occurs. DOS FORMAT will look at this extra information even if the /U flag is given -- we consider this a bug in DOS format and DOS fdisk.
The bottom line is that if you use gfdisk or other Linux partition table programs to change the size of a DOS partition table entry, then you must also use dd to zero the first 512 bytes of that partition before using DOS format to format the partition. For example, if you were using gfdisk to make a DOS partition table entry for /dev/hda1, then (after exiting fdisk or gfdisk and rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is valid) you would use the command
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1
to zero the first 512 bytes of the partition.
BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL if you use the dd command, since a small typo can make all of the data on your disk useless.
For best resutls, you should always use an OS-specific partition table program. For example, you should make DOS partitions with the DOS fdisk program and Linux partitions with the Linux fdisk, cfdisk or gfdisk program.
Feedback
Well, my native language is German...
Feel free to send any feedback or comments to dm@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at if you find an error, or if any information is missing.
Chapter 2. Main Window
The gfdisk main window is divided into two parts. The upper portion shows a graphical representation of the current partition table. This gives you a rough overview of the existing partitions, but hides many details. Therefor the lower portion contains a list representation of the partition table, where you can find more detailed information like start and end sectors.
Graphics View
...
Figure 2-1. gfdisk partition graph window
primary partition
logical partition
extended partition
List View
...
Figure 2-2. gfdisk partition list window
- number
Partition number. Numbers 1 to 4 are primary partitions. Numbers greater or equal 5 are logical partitions.
- Free/P
Free space which can be used for primary partitions.
- Free/L
Free space which can be used for logical partitions.
- Free/PL
Free space which can be used for primary or logical partitions.
- unusable
Free space that can't be used because the maximum number of partitions is reached, i.e there is the limitation of 4 primary partitions.
Chapter 3. Menus
File Menu
- Save Table:
test
- Reload Table:
test
- Clear Table:
test
- Exit:
test
Partition Menu
- Create:
test
- Delete:
test
- Type:
test
- Maximize:
test
- Activate:
test
View Menu
Contains only one sub-menu to adjust the toolbar position.
Options Menu
- Units:
test
- Show Extended:
test
- Keep ext. Size:
test
Chapter 4. Toolbar
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Figure 4-1. gfdisk toolbar
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Chapter 5. Dialogs
Create Partition
...
Device Information
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Chapter 6. Command line options
gfdisk [-m] [device]
Normally gfdisk tries to find all hard disk automatically. You can override this behavior if you specify a device (hard disk) on the command line.
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Chapter 7. Messages, Warnings and Errors
- Writing to this device is not enabled. (ALLOW_WRITE = %s)
Description
- Sorry, not implemented yet.
Description
- No partition selected.
Description
- Maximum number of partitions reached.
Description
- Please select a free space.
Description
- Wrote partition table, but re-read table failed. Reboot the system to ensure the partition table is correctly updated.
Description
- Wrote partition table to disk.
Description
- Writing partition table failed.
Description
- Extended partition already exists.
Description
- Some partitions have been modified. Do you realy want to exit Gnome FDisk?
Description
- No devices found - make sure that you have permissions to access the devices. On many systems only root is allowed to partition the disks.
Description
...
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