Whatever the “Next” menu selection is, you can use the down-arrow
key to select “Partition a Hard Disk.” Go ahead and do this now,
then press Enter.
The “Partition a Hard Disk” menu item presents you with a list of
disk drives you can partition and runs a partitioning application
called cfdisk. You must create at least one “Linux native” (type 83)
disk partition, and you probably want at least one “Linux swap”
(type 82) partition, as explained in later in this section.
You will now create the partitions that you need to install Debian.
For this example, the assumption is that you are partitioning an
empty hard disk.
The boot partition must reside within the first 1,024 of cylinders
of your hard disk (see section 2.3.3 on page [*]). Keeping that in
mind, use the right-arrow key to highlight the “New” menu selection,
and then press Enter. You will be presented with the choice of
creating a _primary_ partition or a _logical_ partition. To help
ensure that the partition containing the boot information is within
the first 1,024 cylinders, create a primary partition first. This
primary partition will be your “Linux native” partition.
Highlight the “Primary” menu selection and press Enter. Next you
will need to enter how large you want that partition to be. Review
section 2.3.2 on page [*] if you’re not sure how large it should be.
Remember to leave enough space for your swap partition (see section
2.3.5 on page [*]). Enter the parition size you want and then press
Enter. Next you will be asked if you want to place the partition at
the beginning of free space or at the end. Place it at the beginning
to help ensure that it lies within the first 1,024 cylinders.
Highlight “Beginning” and press Enter. At this point you will be
brought back to the main screen. Notice that the partition you
created is listed. By default, a Linux native partition was created.
This partition must now be made bootable. Make sure that the
“Bootable” menu selection is highlighted and press Enter. The
partition should now have the word “Boot” listed under the “Flags”
column.
With the remaining space, create another primary partition. Using
the down-arrow key, highlight the _free space_ entry in the
partition list. Now highlight the “New” menu selection and proceed
just as you did when you created the first primary partition. Notice
that the partition is listed as a Linux native partition. Because
this partition will be your swap partition, it must be denoted as
such. Make sure the partition you just created (your swap partition)
is highlighted and then press the left-arrow key until the “Type”
menu selection is highlighted, then press Enter. You will be
presented with a list of supported partition types. The Linux swap
partition type should already be selected. If it is not, enter the
number from the list that corresponds to the Linux swap partition
(82), and then press Enter. Your swap partition should now be listed
as a Linux swap partition under the “FS Type” column in the main
screen.
[Illustration: Figure 3.1: cfdisk screenshot]
Your cfdisk screen should look something like the screenshot in
Figure 3.1 on page [*]. The numbers may not be the same, but the
Flags and FS Type column shoulds be similar.
Until now, nothing on your disk has been altered. If you are
satisfied that the partition scheme you created is what you want,
press the left-arrow key until “Write” is highlighted, and press
Enter. Your hard disk has now been partitioned. Quit the cfdisk
application by selecting the “Quit” menu selection. Once you have
left cfdisk, you should be back in Debian’s dbootstrap installation
application.