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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | COMMANDS | COLORS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON |
CFDISK(8) System Administration CFDISK(8)
cfdisk - display or manipulate a disk partition table
cfdisk [options] [device]
cfdisk is a curses-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).
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-L, --color[=when]
Colorize the output. The optional argument when can be auto,
never or always. If the when argument is omitted, it defaults
to auto. The colors can be disabled, for the current built-in
default see --help output. See also the COLORS section.
-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. This option allows you to create a new
partition table from scratch or from an sfdisk-compatible
script.
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.
s Sort the partitions in ascending start-sector order. When
deleting and adding partitions, it is likely that the
numbering of the partitions will no longer match their order
on the disk. This command restores that match.
t Change the partition type. By default, new partitions are
created as Linux partitions.
u Dump the current in-memory partition table to an sfdisk-
compatible script file.
The script files are compatible between cfdisk, fdisk, sfdisk
and other libfdisk applications. For more details see
sfdisk(8).
It is also possible to load an sfdisk-script into cfdisk if
there is no partition table on the device or when you start
cfdisk with the --zero command-line option.
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.
x Toggle extra information about a partition.
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.
Left Arrow, Right Arrow
Select the preceding or the next menu item. Hitting Enter
will execute the currently selected item.
All commands can be entered with either uppercase or lowercase
letters (except for Write). When in a submenu or at a prompt, you
can hit the Esc key to return to the main menu.
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.
CFDISK_DEBUG=all
enables cfdisk debug output.
LIBFDISK_DEBUG=all
enables libfdisk debug output.
LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
enables libblkid debug output.
LIBSMARTCOLS_DEBUG=all
enables libsmartcols debug output.
LIBSMARTCOLS_DEBUG_PADDING=on
use visible padding characters. Requires enabled
LIBSMARTCOLS_DEBUG.
fdisk(8), parted(8), partprobe(8), partx(8), sfdisk(8)
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
The current cfdisk implementation is based on the original cfdisk
from Kevin E. Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu).
The cfdisk command is part of the util-linux package and is available
from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
utilities) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2017-07-05. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
util-linux March 2014 CFDISK(8)
Pages that refer to this page: fdisk(8), pvcreate(8), sfdisk(8)