Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 11 - DEPLOYMENT GUIDE 17-03-2009 Deployment Manual page 167

12.1.1 Partition Types
Every hard disk has a partition table with space for four entries. Every entry in the
partition table corresponds to a primary partition or an extended partition. Only one
extended partition entry is allowed, however.
A primary partition simply consists of a continuous range of cylinders (physical disk
areas) assigned to a particular operating system. With primary partitions only, you
would be limited to four partitions per hard disk, because more do not fit in the partition
table. This is why extended partitions are used. Extended partitions are also continuous
ranges of disk cylinders, but an extended partition may be subdivided into logical par-
titions itself. Logical partitions do not require entries in the partition table. In other
words, an extended partition is a container for logical partitions.
If you need more than four partitions, create an extended partition as the fourth partition
or earlier. This extended partition should span the entire remaining free cylinder range.
Then create multiple logical partitions within the extended partition. The maximum
number of logical partitions is 15 on SCSI, SATA, and Firewire disks and 63 on (E)IDE
disks. It does not matter which types of partitions are used for Linux. Primary and log-
ical partitions both work fine.
12.1.2 Creating a Partition
To create a partition from scratch select Hard Disks and then a hard disk with free
space. The actual modification can be done in the Partitions tab:
1 Select Add. If several hard disks are connected, a selection dialog appears in
which to select a hard disk for the new partition.
2 Specify the partition type (primary or extended). Create up to four primary parti-
tions or up to three primary partitions and one extended partition. Within the
extended partition, create several logical partitions (see
Types" (page 157)).
3 Select the file system to use and a mount point. YaST suggests a mount point
for each partition created. To use a different mount method, like mount by label,
select Fstab Options.
Section 12.1.1, "Partition
Advanced Disk Setup 157