fdisk

Purpose

Partition a disk or display information about existing partitions.

Syntax

fdisk [options] [device_name]

Options

-l displays partition tables and exits.

-s device displays the size of the specified partition.

-v displays the version number of the fdisk program.

Description

The fdisk command partitions a specified hard disk (see Appendix B for disk-drive naming conventions). You can also use fdisk to display information about existing partitions. You should never run fdisk and alter the partitions of a hard disk while one or more of its partitions are mounted on the Linux file system. Instead, you should boot from an installation diskette (or a boot diskette) and perform the partitioning. Remember that partitioning typically destroys all existing data on a hard disk.