As a convenience to our customers, we provide the
FIPS utility. This is a freely available
program that can resize FAT (File Allocation Table) partitions. It's
included on the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM in the dosutils
directory.
Please Note
Many people have successfully used FIPS to
repartition their hard drives. However, because of the nature of the
operations carried out by FIPS, and the wide
variety of hardware and software configurations under which it must run,
Red Hat cannot guarantee that FIPS will work
properly on your system. Therefore, no installation support whatsoever
is available for FIPS; use it at your own
risk.
That said, if you decide to repartition your hard drive with
FIPS, it is vital that you do two things:
Perform a Backup -- Make two copies of all the
important data on your computer. These copies should be to removable
media (such as tape or diskettes), and you should make sure they are
readable before proceeding.
Read the Documentation -- Completely read the
FIPS documentation, located in the
FIPS directory on Red Hat Linux CD-ROM.
Should use decide to use FIPS, be aware that
after FIPS runs you will be left with two
partitions: the one you resized, and the one
FIPS created out of the newly freed space. If
your goal is to use that space to install Red Hat Linux, you should delete the
newly created partition, either by using fdisk
under your current operating system, or while setting up partitions during
a custom-class installation.
The following instructions are a simplified version of the
FIPS documentation file,
fips.doc, located in the
FIPS directory
(/dosutils/fips20/*). These instructions should apply
in most instances. If you encounter any problems, see the documentation
file.
From Windows:
Do a full backup.
Run scandisk to verify that the
hard drive contains no bad clusters.
Decide how to distribute the available space on the hard drive
between the operating systems. Use Windows
Explorer to see the free space on the drive. Make
a note of the space (in megabytes) that each operating system
will have.
If you don't have one, create a DOS boot disk.
To create a DOS boot disk, first boot your machine to DOS.
Next, insert a blank, formatted diskette into the floppy drive.
Type the following at the command prompt and press
Enter:
FORMAT A: /S
If you're using Windows 95, first insert a blank formatted
diskette into the floppy drive. Next, go to
Start/Run, and type:
FORMAT A: /S
The diskette will be formatted, and COMMAND.COM,
along with the associated hidden files
(IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS,
and BDLSAPCE.BIN), will be copied to the
diskette.
Copy the following files on the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM to the DOS boot
disk.
Insert the DOS boot disk into the floppy drive and reboot the system.
Start FIPS (type fips at
the prompt).
When FIPS begins, you'll find a welcome
screen similar to the following:
FIPS version 2.0, Copyright (C) 1993/4 Arno Schaefer
FAT32 Support, Copyright (C) 1997 Gordon Chaffee
DO NOT use FIPS in a multitasking environment like Windows, OS/2, Desqview,
Novell Task manager or the Linux DOS emulator; boot from a DOS boot disk first.
If you use OS/2 or a disk compressor, read the relevant sections in FIPS.DOC.
FIPS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, see file COPYING for details.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; again, see file COPYING for details.
Press any key.
Figure D-1. FIPS Welcome Screen
When you press a key, a root partition screen similar to the following
appears. (Note that, if the computer has more than one hard drive,
you'll be asked to select which one you want to partition.)
When you press a key, details about the hard drive, such as the
following, will appear.
Boot sector:
Bytes per sector: 512
Sectors per cluster: 8
Reserved sectors: 1
Number of FATs: 2
Number of rootdirectory entries: 512
Number of sectors (short): 0
Media descriptor byte: f8h
Sectors per FAT: 145
Sectors per track: 63
Drive heads: 16
Hidden sectors: 63
Number of sectors (long): 141057
Physical drive number: 80h
Signature: 29h
Checking boot sector ... OK
Checking FAT ... OK
Searching for free space ... OK
Do you want to make a backup copy of your root and boot sector before
proceeding? (y/n)
Figure D-3. FIPS Boot Sector Screen
You should select y, for yes,
to make a backup copy of your root and boot sector before proceeding
with FIPS.
Next, you'll be presented with the following message:
Do you have a bootable floppy disk in drive A: as described in the
documentation? (y/n)
Verify that a DOS boot disk is in the floppy drive, and type
y, for yes. A screen similar
to the following will appear, allowing you to resize the partition.
Writing file a:\rootboot:000
Enter start cylinder for new partition (33-526)
Use the cursor keys to choose the cylinder, <enter> to continue
Old partition Cylinder New partition
258.9 MB 33 3835.8 MB
Figure D-4. Partition Resizing Screen
The initial values allocate all free space on the
disk to the new partition. This is not what you want, because this
setting would leave no free space on your Windows partition. Press the
right arrow to increase the size of the Windows
partition and decrease the size of the new (Linux) partition; press
the left arrow to decrease the size of the Windows
partition and increase the size of the Linux partition. When the sizes
are what you want, press Enter. A verification screen similar to
the following appears:
First Cluster: 17442
Last Cluster: 65511
Testing if empty ... OK
New partition table:
| | Start | | End | Start |Number of|
Part.|bootable|Head Cyl. Sector|System|Head Cyl. Sector| Sector |Sectors | MB
-----+--------+----------------+------+----------------+--------+---------+----
1 | yes | 0 148 1| 83h| 15 295 63| 149184| 149184| 1090
2 | no | 0 139 1| 06h| 254 521 63| 2233035| 6152995| 3084
3 | no | 0 140 1| 06h| 15 147 63| 141120| 8064| 3
4 | no | 0 0 0| 00h| 0 0 0| 0| 0| 0
Checking root sector ... OK
Do you want to continue or reedit the partition table (c/r)?
Figure D-5. FIPS Verification Screen
If you answer r (to re-edit the partition
tables), Figure 4 reappears, allowing you to
change the partition sizes. If you answer c, a
confirmation screen (Figure 6) appears:
New boot sector:
Boot sector:
Bytes per sector: 512
Sectors per cluster: 8
Reserved sectors: 1
Number of FATs: 2
Number of rootdirectory entries: 512
Number of sectors (short): 0
Media descriptor byte: f8h
Sectors per FAT: 145
Sectors per track: 63
Drive heads: 16
Hidden sectors: 63
Number of sectors (long): 141057
Physical drive number: 80h
Signature: 29h
Checking boot sector ... OK
Ready to write new partition scheme to disk
Do you want to proceed (y/n)?
Figure D-6. FIPS Confirmation Screen
Answering y completes the resizing operation. A
harmless error message may occur, stating, in effect that
FIPS cannot reboot the system.
After a successful operation, the disk will have two partitions. The first
partition (hda1 or sda1) will be
used by Windows. We recommend that you start Windows (remember to remove
the boot disk from drive A:) and run
scandisk on drive C:.
If you encounter any problems, (for example, Windows will not boot), you
can reverse the FIPS resizing operation with
the restorrb.exe command, which you copied to
your DOS boot disk. In case of any errors, read the
FIPS documentation files
(fips.doc and fips.faq), which
indicate a number of factors that could cause the resizing operation to
fail. If all else fails, you can restore Windows with the backup you made.
The second partition (hda2 or
sda2) contains the space that the Red Hat Linux installation
program will use. When the Disk Druid screen
appears during installation, delete this partition (the installation
manual explains how), then proceed with Linux partitioning.
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