preserve existing partitions

[Bruce Edge]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gernot Weber [mailto:gweber at kph.uni-mainz.de]
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:18 AM
> To: linux-fai at uni-koeln.de
> Subject: preserve existing partitions
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just wondered whether it is possible to tell fai to use just the not
> used space on a hard disk. Some of the machines here are dual boot and
> have Windows on one or two partitions. I would like to shrink these
> partition with partition magic or something like this and then install
> linux with fai on the unpartitioned - free disk space.
> 
> Is this possible?
> 

Sure, in /usr/share/doc/fai/README.disk_config.gz it states:

Preserving partitions:                                                                
                                                                                      
It is possible to preserve the size of a partition or additionally to                 
preserve the existing data on this partition. To preserve only the                    
partition size, the number of the partition must be unchanged and the                 
size must be specified as "preserve<no>". The number <no> is the                      
device number (used by /dev/hda*, or see output of "df") of the                       
partition. Primary partitions are numbered from one to four, the                      
numbers for logical partitions begin at five.                                         
                                                                                      
In this example, the partitions' numbers  (= device number) are also                  
shown for disk sdb:                                                                   
                                                                                      
primary   /tmp        300-500     #  1                                                
primary   /backup     preserve2   #  2                                                
logical   swap        50-100      # (3)   5                                           
logical   /scratch2   100-300     # (3)   6                                           
logical   -           preserve7   # (3)   7                                           
logical   /var        100         # (3)   8                                           
logical   /var/tmp    preserve9   # (3)   9                                           
primary   /tmp/mytmp  -300        #  4                      

-Bruce