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January 23, 20242 min read

Disk Management with parted

Creating and formatting partitions with parted, verifying mounts, and making them permanent via /etc/fstab.

#linux#disk#parted

Installation

sudo apt install parted

Useful parted commands

  • print — print the full partition table.
  • select DEVICE — switch to a different device to edit.
  • mklabel gpt — create a GPT label on the partition table.
  • mkpart primary btrfs 1MiB 100% — create a primary partition formatted as BTRFS, spanning from 1MiB to the end of the disk.

Other useful disk management commands

  • lsblk and fdisk -l — show the disk configuration for every disk.
  • sudo mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sda1 — format sda1 as BTRFS (not always necessary if parted already did it).

Validate the result with df -h, which lists every mount point.

Making a mount permanent

To have a drive mount automatically on boot, add an entry to /etc/fstab:

  1. Get the partition's UUID with lsblk -f or sudo blkid.
  2. Add a line in this format:
UUID=0f2b8e50-94c0-4385-abed-ce020da2555b /fast  btrfs  defaults  0  0
  1. Reload the config with systemctl daemon-reload.

Tip

To mount or unmount a drive temporarily without touching /etc/fstab: sudo mount /dev/sdb1 and sudo umount /mnt/loc.

For adding users and groups to control who can access a mount, see Linux User & Group Management.

Conclusion

parted is the most capable partition tool available at the terminal — used carefully, it can save a lot of time over GUI tools.

References