NAME¶
cfdisk - display or manipulate a disk partition table
SYNOPSIS¶
cfdisk [
options] [
device]
DESCRIPTION¶
cfdisk is a curses/slang-based program for partitioning any block device.
The default device is
/dev/sda.
Note that
cfdisk provides basic partitioning functionality with a
user-friendly interface. If you need advanced features, use
fdisk(8)
instead.
Since version 2.25
cfdisk supports MBR (DOS), GPT, SUN and SGI disk
labels, but no longer provides any functionality for CHS
(Cylinder-Head-Sector) addressing. CHS has never been important for Linux, and
this addressing concept does not make any sense for new devices.
Since version 2.25
cfdisk also does not provide a 'print' command any
more. This functionality is provided by the utilities
partx(8) and
lsblk(8) in a very comfortable and rich way.
If you want to remove an old partition table from a device, use
wipefs(8).
OPTIONS¶
- -h, --help
- Display help text and exit.
- -L, --color[=when]
- Colorize the output; enabled by default. The optional argument when
can be auto, never or always. If the when
argument is omitted, it defaults to auto.
- -V, --version
- Display version information and exit.
- -z, --zero
- Start with an in-memory zeroed partition table. This option does not zero
the partition table on the disk; rather, it simply starts the program
without reading the existing partition table.
COMMANDS¶
The commands for
cfdisk can be entered by pressing the corresponding key
(pressing
Enter after the command is not necessary). Here is a list of
the available commands:
- b
- Toggle the bootable flag of the current partition. This allows you to
select which primary partition is bootable on the drive. This command may
not be available for all partition label types.
- d
- Delete the current partition. This will convert the current partition into
free space and merge it with any free space immediately surrounding the
current partition. A partition already marked as free space or marked as
unusable cannot be deleted.
- h
- Show the help screen.
- n
- Create a new partition from free space. cfdisk then prompts you for
the size of the partition you want to create. The default size is equal to
the entire available free space at the current position.
The size may be followed by a multiplicative suffix: KiB (=1024), MiB
(=1024*1024), and so on for GiB, TiB, PiB, EiB, ZiB and YiB (the
"iB" is optional, e.g. "K" has the same meaning as
"KiB").
- q
- Quit the program. This will exit the program without writing any data to
the disk.
- t
- Change the partition type. By default, new partitions are created as
Linux partitions.
- W
- Write the partition table to disk (you must enter an uppercase W). Since
this might destroy data on the disk, you must either confirm or deny the
write by entering `yes' or `no'. If you enter `yes', cfdisk will
write the partition table to disk and then tell the kernel to re-read the
partition table from the disk.
The re-reading of the partition table does not always work. In such a case
you need to inform the kernel about any new partitions by using
partprobe(8) or partx(8), or by rebooting the system.
- Up Arrow, Down Arrow
- Move the cursor to the previous or next partition. If there are more
partitions than can be displayed on a screen, you can display the next
(previous) set of partitions by moving down (up) at the last (first)
partition displayed on the screen.
All commands can be entered with either uppercase or lowercase letters (except
for
Write). When in a submenu or at a prompt for entering a size, you
can hit the
ESC key to return to the main menu.
COLORS¶
Implicit coloring can be disabled by creating the empty file
/etc/terminal-colors.d/cfdisk.disable.
See
terminal-colors.d(5) for more details about colorization
configuration.
cfdisk does not support color customization with a color-scheme file.
SEE ALSO¶
fdisk(8),
sfdisk(8),
parted(8),
partprobe(8),
partx(8)
AUTHOR¶
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
The current cfdisk implementation is based on the original cfdisk from Kevin E.
Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu).
AVAILABILITY¶
The cfdisk command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.