2.4.2 Target partition device

You need to find out the device name for the hard disk partition you want to install ttylinux on. The device names for partitions are formed by appending numbers to the device name of the corresponding hard disk. For example, if your hard disk device is /dev/hda, the device /dev/hda3 is the third partition on that hard disk. Numbers 1-4 are the primary partition, extended partitions start at 5.

Due to the combined space requirements of the 8 MB ttylinux filesystem and the 2 MB default kernel, the minimum partition size you can install ttylinux on and have it work is about 10-12 MB.

IDE hard disks use the same device names as given for IDE CD-ROM devices above. For SATA, the names are as follows:

Device name	Description
/dev/sda	First SATA hard disk device
/dev/sdb	Second SATA hard disk device
/dev/sdc	Third SATA hard disk device
/dev/sdd	Fourth SATA hard disk device

Note that if you want to create a dual-boot setup with Windows and ttylinux on the same hard-disk later (a topic not covered here), you can't use /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1 as your target partition because that is where Windows needs to be installed to work.

Here are some examples of possible device names for your target partition:

Device name	Description
/dev/hda1	First primary partition on primary IDE master
/dev/hdb5	First extended partition on primary IDE slave
/dev/sda2	Second primary partition on first SATA hard disk
/dev/sdc6	Second extended partition on third SATA hard disk

Note that depending on the BIOS, it might not be possible to boot from anything but the first two hard disks installed in the system.

What to do if your target disk is not partitioned yet? ttylinux includes the fdisk program that can be used to partition hard disks. For example, to partition a hard disk connected as master to the first IDE controller, use:

  fdisk /dev/hda

The user interface of fdisk is somewhat primitive, so be careful. If you haven't used it before, a good idea would be to search the Internet for instructions. The basic commands you may need are "d" to delete a partition, "n" to create a new partition, "p" to print the current partition table, and "w" to write the edited partition table to disk. You can also use "q" to exit fdisk without saving your changes.