RHEL5 Installation Guide - 2.3. Do You Have Enough Disk Space?

2.3. Do You Have Enough Disk Space?

Nearly every modern-day operating system (OS) uses disk partitions, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is no exception. When you install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you may have to work with disk partitions. If you have not worked with disk partitions before (or need a quick review of the basic concepts), refer to Chapter 25, An Introduction to Disk Partitions before proceeding.

The disk space used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux must be separate from the disk space used by other OSes you may have installed on your system, such as Windows, OS/2, or even a different version of Linux. For x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 systems, at least two partitions (/ and swap) must be dedicated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Itanium systems, at least three partitions (/, /boot/efi/, and swap) must be dedicated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Before you start the installation process, you must

have enough unpartitioned^[1] disk space for the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or
have one or more partitions that may be deleted, thereby freeing up enough disk space to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

To gain a better sense of how much space you really need, refer to the recommended partitioning sizes discussed in Section 4.18.4, “Recommended Partitioning Scheme”.

If you are not sure that you meet these conditions, or if you want to know how to create free disk space for your Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation, refer to Chapter 25, An Introduction to Disk Partitions .

^[1] Unpartitioned disk space means that available disk space on the hard drive(s) you are installing to has not been divided into sections for data. When you partition a disk, each partition behaves like a separate disk drive.