View source for Partitioning a flash card

'''WARNING: Partitioning your flash card will delete all data of the card, so be sure to back up any important data to a computer or another flash card.'''

'''Note:''' As of 4-28-2008 Penguinbait has made a deb package that automates all of this for you.  See http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19639  and  http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20534

== Install the necessary packages and create partitions ==

'''Note:''' on the N800 and N810 the filesystem mounted under /media/mmc1 is the external media card and the internal card is mounted under /media/mmc2. The device that is mounted under /media/mmc1 is /dev/mmcblk1 and not mmcblk0 that is mounted under /media/mmc2. If you plan to format the external media card replace mmcblk0p with mmcblk1p.

In summary:

* The external card is mmcblk1
* The internal card is mmcblk0

First, you will need [[root access]].

In Xterm on your tablet, run:

 apt-get install e2fsprogs
 umount /media/mmc1
 umount /media/mmc2
 sfdisk /dev/mmcblk0
 /dev/mmcblk0p1:1,15000,6
 /dev/mmcblk0p2:15001,,
 /dev/mmcblk0p3:
 /dev/mmcblk0p4:

This will create two partitions in a 1GB flash card: the first one is VFAT (that's what number 6 means), and the second one is LINUX_83. The size of the first one is almost 480MB (that's the meaning of the 15000), and the second one is sized till the end of the card (that's what ,, means). Partitions three and four are empty.

The arguments for [http://linux.die.net/man/8/sfdisk sfdisk] are: 
* The device node to use for the partition
* The start cylinder on the card
* The end cylinder on the card (leave blank to have the partition go to the end of the disk)
* The filesystem type ([http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html complete list])

A cylinder is a 32KB block on a flash card, so 15,000 cylinders equates to 480,000KB (approx. 480MB).

== Format the partitions ==

Once you have created the required partition table, you will need to initialise the filesystems.

Type as root:

 mkdosfs /dev/mmcblk0p1
 shutdown -r now

After it reboots, then open Xterm and, as root, run:

 mke2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
 shutdown -r now

== Mounting the partitions ==

The VFAT partition will be mounted by the system automagically at start-up. To mount the EXT2 partition we need to load the kernel modules, so open Xterm and,  '''as root''', type:

 insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/mbcache.ko
 insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ext2.ko
 mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /media/mmc2

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