FDISK(8) System Administration FDISK(8)
NAME
fdisk - manipulate disk partition table
SYNOPSIS
fdisk [-uc] [-b sectorsize] [-C cyls] [-H heads] [-S sects] device
fdisk -l [-u] [device...]
fdisk -s partition...
fdisk -v
fdisk -h
DESCRIPTION
fdisk (in the first form of invocation) is a menu-driven program for creation and manipulation of partition
tables. It understands DOS-type partition tables and BSD- or SUN-type disklabels.
fdisk does not understand GUID partition tables (GPTs) and it is not designed for large partitions. In these
cases, use the more advanced GNU parted(8).
fdisk does not use DOS-compatible mode and cylinders as display units by default. The old deprecated DOS
behavior can be enabled with the '-c=dos -u=cylinders' command-line options.
Hard disks can be divided into one or more logical disks called partitions. This division is recorded in the
partition table, found in sector 0 of the disk. (In the BSD world one talks about `disk slices' and a
`disklabel'.)
Linux needs at least one partition, namely for its root file system. It can use swap files and/or swap parti‐
tions, but the latter are more efficient. So, usually one will want a second Linux partition dedicated as
swap partition. On Intel-compatible hardware, the BIOS that boots the system can often only access the first
1024 cylinders of the disk. For this reason people with large disks often create a third partition, just a
few MB large, typically mounted on /boot, to store the kernel image and a few auxiliary files needed at boot
time, so as to make sure that this stuff is accessible to the BIOS. There may be reasons of security, ease of
administration and backup, or testing, to use more than the minimum number of partitions.
DEVICES
The device is usually /dev/sda, /dev/sdb or so. A device name refers to the entire disk. Old systems without
libata (a library used inside the Linux kernel to support ATA host controllers and devices) make a difference
between IDE and SCSI disks. In such cases the device name will be /dev/hd* (IDE) or /dev/sd* (SCSI).
The partition is a device name followed by a partition number. For example, /dev/sda1 is the first partition
on the first hard disk in the system. See also Linux kernel documentation (the Documentation/devices.txt
file).
DISK LABELS
A BSD/SUN-type disklabel can describe 8 partitions, the third of which should be a `whole disk' partition. Do
not start a partition that actually uses its first sector (like a swap partition) at cylinder 0, since that
will destroy the disklabel.
An IRIX/SGI-type disklabel can describe 16 partitions, the eleventh of which should be an entire `volume' par‐
tition, while the ninth should be labeled `volume header'. The volume header will also cover the partition
table, i.e., it starts at block zero and extends by default over five cylinders. The remaining space in the
volume header may be used by header directory entries. No partitions may overlap with the volume header.
these C/H/S fields can be filled only when the number of heads and the number of sectors per track are known.
And second, even if we know what these numbers should be, the 24 bits that are available do not suffice. DOS
uses C/H/S only, Windows uses both, Linux never uses C/H/S.
If possible, fdisk will obtain the disk geometry automatically. This is not necessarily the physical disk
geometry (indeed, modern disks do not really have anything like a physical geometry, certainly not something
that can be described in simplistic Cylinders/Heads/Sectors form), but it is the disk geometry that MS-DOS
uses for the partition table.
Usually all goes well by default, and there are no problems if Linux is the only system on the disk. However,
if the disk has to be shared with other operating systems, it is often a good idea to let an fdisk from
another operating system make at least one partition. When Linux boots it looks at the partition table, and
tries to deduce what (fake) geometry is required for good cooperation with other systems.
Whenever a partition table is printed out, a consistency check is performed on the partition table entries.
This check verifies that the physical and logical start and end points are identical, and that each partition
starts and ends on a cylinder boundary (except for the first partition).
Some versions of MS-DOS create a first partition which does not begin on a cylinder boundary, but on sector 2
of the first cylinder. Partitions beginning in cylinder 1 cannot begin on a cylinder boundary, but this is
unlikely to cause difficulty unless you have OS/2 on your machine.
A sync() and an ioctl(BLKRRPART) (reread partition table from disk) are performed before exiting when the par‐
tition table has been updated. Long ago it used to be necessary to reboot after the use of fdisk. I do not
think this is the case anymore -- indeed, rebooting too quickly might cause loss of not-yet-written data.
Note that both the kernel and the disk hardware may buffer data.
DOS 6.x WARNING
The DOS 6.x FORMAT command 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 FOR‐
MAT and DOS FDISK.
The bottom line is that if you use cfdisk or fdisk 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 parti‐
tion. For example, if you were using cfdisk to make a DOS partition table entry for /dev/sda1, then (after
exiting fdisk or cfdisk and rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is valid) you would use
the command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 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 use‐
less.
For best results, 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 or Linux cfdisk program.
OPTIONS
-b sectorsize
Specify the sector size of the disk. Valid values are 512, 1024, 2048 or 4096. (Recent kernels know
the sector size. Use this only on old kernels or to override the kernel's ideas.) Since util-
linux-2.17, fdisk differentiates between logical and physical sector size. This option changes both
sector sizes to sectorsize.
Specify the number of heads of the disk. (Not the physical number, of course, but the number used for
partition tables.) Reasonable values are 255 and 16. This option is DEPRECATED.
-S sects
Specify the number of sectors per track of the disk. (Not the physical number, of course, but the num‐
ber used for partition tables.) A reasonable value is 63. This option is DEPRECATED.
-h Print help and then exit.
-l List the partition tables for the specified devices and then exit. If no devices are given, those men‐
tioned in /proc/partitions (if that exists) are used.
-s partition...
Print the size (in blocks) of each given partition.
-u[=unit]
When listing partition tables, show sizes in 'sectors' or in 'cylinders'. The default is to show sizes
in sectors. For backward compatibility, it is possible to use the option without the <units> argument
-- then the default is used. Note that the optional <unit> argument cannot be separated from the -u
option by a space, the correct form is for example '-u=cylinders'.
-v Print version number of fdisk program and exit.
ENVIRONMENT
FDISK_DEBUG=0xffff
enables debug output
SEE ALSO
cfdisk(8), sfdisk(8), mkfs(8), parted(8), partprobe(8), kpartx(8)
AVAILABILITY
The fdisk command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.ker‐
nel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
util-linux June 2012 FDISK(8)
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