# Creating a New Partition

Open Firmware and the Mac OS's impose certain requirements on partitioning. This is discussed in appendixe. In particular, you cannot use `fdisk`, you will need an `apple_bootstrap` partition, and that should precede any OSX partition.

Start a disk partitioning program such as `parted` with a command line option naming the hard disk on which the new partition will be created—for example `/dev/hda` for the primary Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) disk. Create at least an apple bootstrap partition, a Linux native partition, and a swap partition, if needed. Please refer to `parted(8)` if you do not yet know how to use the programs.

Remember the designation of the new partition (e.g., `hda5`). This book will refer to this as the CLFS partition. Also remember the designation of the swap partition. These names will be needed later for the `/etc/fstab` file. You will also need to know the designation of the apple_bootstrap partition for the `yaboot.conf` when you set this up before you run `ybin`.