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Chapter 16. Creating a partition with parted

As a system administrator, you can create new partitions on a disk by using the parted utility.

Note

The required partitions are swap, /boot/, and / (root).

Prerequisites

  • A partition table on the disk.
  • If the partition you want to create is larger than 2TiB, format the disk with the GUID Partition Table (GPT).

Procedure

  1. Start the parted utility: 

    # parted block-device

  2. View the current partition table to determine if there is enough free space: 

    # (parted) print
    • Resize the partition in case there is not enough free space.

    • From the partition table, determine:

      • The start and end points of the new partition.
      • On MBR, what partition type it should be.

  3. Create the new partition: 

    # (parted) mkpart part-type name fs-type start end
    • Replace part-type with with primary, logical, or extended. This applies only to the MBR partition table.
    • Replace name with an arbitrary partition name. This is required for GPT partition tables.
    • Replace fs-type with xfs, ext2, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, linux-swap, ntfs, or reiserfs. The fs-type parameter is optional. Note that the parted utility does not create the file system on the partition.
    • Replace start and end with the sizes that determine the starting and ending points of the partition, counting from the beginning of the disk. You can use size suffixes, such as 512MiB, 20GiB, or 1.5TiB. The default size is in megabytes.

    Example 16.1. Creating a small primary partition

    To create a primary partition from 1024MiB until 2048MiB on an MBR table, use: 

    # (parted) mkpart primary 1024MiB 2048MiB

    The changes start applying after you enter the command.

  4. View the partition table to confirm that the created partition is in the partition table with the correct partition type, file system type, and size: 

    # (parted) print

  5. Exit the parted shell: 

    # (parted) quit

  6. Register the new device node: 

    # udevadm settle

  7. Verify that the kernel recognizes the new partition: 

    # cat /proc/partitions

Additional resources