Andrew Cady wrote:
Use cfdisk to create partitions; using fdisk is afaik deprecated. *Always* reboot after creating partitions or changing the partition table before doing anything else, and verify that the partitions have been created in the way you wanted after the reboot.This isn't necessary if the kernel re-reads the partition table. cfdisk will notify you if it did not.
Yeah, it does, but if it fails nonetheless ... The safest way is probably a reboot --- but I must admit that I didn't reboot during the installation process when renewing the mail server this weekend. But then, the disks were new anyway :)
It only fails if a partition on the disk is mounted.
I'd say that it *should* fail then :)
By the way, if the re-read fails, you can always umount and then run "sfdisk -R" (or cfdisk and hit W) to try it again. The sfdisk man page recommends running this before changing your partitions, so you know whether it will succeed afterwards. Good idea!
Ah, that's something to check out. I've never used sfdisk yet. The BUGS section of the manpage of fdisk has some quite noteworthy hints:"There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and strengths. Try them in the order cfdisk, fdisk, sfdisk. (Indeed, cfdisk is a beautiful program that has strict requirements on the partition tables it accepts, and produces high quality partition tables. Use it if you can.
fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you can. sfdisk is for hackers only - the user interface is terrible, but it is more correct than fdisk and more powerful than both fdisk and cfdisk. Moreover, it can be used noninteractively.)"
When the manpage of a program tells you that the program is buggy and that you should not use it, that should tell you something :)
GH