Disk Partitioning

Red Hat Linux/Alpha supports two varieties of hard drive partitioning: standard DOS-style partitioning and BSD-style partitioning.

The standard fdisk-style partitioning method has the usual oddities (such as extended partitions) and is done in the same way as on Intel platforms (using Linux fdisk). This is the partitioning style you must use if you are using the ARC or AlphaBIOS console.

Partitioning for SRM

When using aboot to boot Red Hat Linux from the SRM console, you must use BSD-style disk labels. aboot does not understand DOS-style partition tables as MILO does, and therefore a slightly different installation path is necessary. When you're using disk labels on an Alpha, be aware that you'll need initial unallocated space at the beginning of the hard drive.

The initial unallocated space is unallocated disk space that is not explicitly allocated to any label other than the "whole disk" label. This space should be approximately 1 MB to 10 MB (2048 to 20480 sectors), depending on exactly what configuration for aboot you will be using. Its purpose is to provide space at the very beginning of the hard drive for aboot to write the boot block and object file that allows booting to kernels located within the disk labels. For more information on the process aboot uses to boot, please see the SRM Firmware HOWTO at http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/srm.html.

BSD-style disk labeling is different in certain ways from the standard fdisk partitioning used in ARC/AlphaBIOS installations and on Intel installations:

The partitions are identified by letters (a, b, c...) instead of numbers.
The partition types are different. For example, "83" and "82" no longer correspond to "Linux" and "Linux Swap," respectively. In fact, ext2 partitions are identified as "8"; the swap partition is "1".
You can have a maximum of eight partitions (a to h) per drive.
The first partition should start on cylinder 2, since the first cylinder may not be full-size.
Partition types must be explicitly set after creation. The BSD disk label program uses a default partition type of "unknown" which causes the Disk Setup portion of the installation program not to see the partitions.

You will want to create at least three partitions (or more if you chose to put /usr in a separate partition, etc.)

One of the partitions should be your swap partition. It should be approximately twice the size of the amount of physical RAM present in your machine. It should be set to type "1" for swap.

The rest if the partitions compose your Linux filesystem layout. They should be sized as appropriate and set to type "8" for ext2.

Partitioning for MILO

The only rule for partitioning the hard drive for MILO is that there should be a 2 MB FAT partition at the beginning of the drive from which you will load MILO.