CGDISK(8)							 GPT fdisk Manual							 CGDISK(8)

NAME

       cgdisk - Curses-based GUID partition table (GPT) manipulator

SYNOPSIS

       cgdisk device

DESCRIPTION

       GPT  fdisk  is a text-mode family of programs for creation and manipulation of partition tables. The cgdisk member of this family employs a
       curses-based user interface for interaction using a text-mode menuing system. It will automatically convert an old-style Master Boot Record
       (MBR) partition table or BSD disklabel stored without an MBR carrier partition to the newer Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) Partition Ta-
       ble (GPT) format, or will load a GUID partition table. Other members of this program family are gdisk (the most feature-rich program of the
       group,  with  a	non-curses-based interactive user interface) and sgdisk (which is driven via command-line options for use by experts or in
       scripts).  FixParts is a related program for fixing a limited set of problems with MBR disks.

       For information on MBR vs. GPT, as well as GPT terminology and structure, see the extended  GPT	fdisk  documentation  at  http://www.rods-
       books.com/gdisk/ or consult Wikipedia.

       The cgdisk program employs a user interface similar to that of Linux's cfdisk, but cgdisk modifies GPT partitions. It also has the capabil-
       ity of transforming MBR partitions or BSD disklabels into GPT partitions. Like the original cfdisk program, cgdisk  does  not  modify  disk
       structures  until  you explicitly write them to disk, so if you make a mistake, you can exit from the program with the Quit option to leave
       your partitions unmodified.

       Ordinarily, cgdisk operates on disk device files, such as /dev/sda or /dev/hda under Linux, /dev/disk0 under  Mac  OS  X,  or  /dev/ad0	or
       /dev/da0  under	FreeBSD.  The  program	can also operate on disk image files, which can be either copies of whole disks (made with dd, for
       instance) or raw disk images used by emulators such as QEMU or VMWare. Note that only raw disk images are supported; cgdisk cannot work	on
       compressed or other advanced disk image formats.

       Upon  start,  cgdisk  attempts to identify the partition type in use on the disk. If it finds valid GPT data, cgdisk will use it. If cgdisk
       finds a valid MBR or BSD disklabel but no GPT data, it will attempt to convert the MBR or disklabel into  GPT  form.  (BSD  disklabels  are
       likely to have unusable first and/or final partitions because they overlap with the GPT data structures, though.) Upon exiting with the 'w'
       option, cgdisk replaces the MBR or disklabel with a GPT. This action is potentially dangerous! Your system may become unbootable, and  par-
       tition  type  codes  may  become  corrupted  if	the  disk  uses  unrecognized type codes.  Boot problems are particularly likely if you're
       multi-booting with any GPT-unaware OS. If you mistakenly launch cgdisk on an MBR disk, you can safely exit the program without  making  any
       changes by using the Quit option.

       When creating a fresh partition table, certain considerations may be in order:

       *      For  data  (non-boot) disks, and for boot disks used on BIOS-based computers with GRUB as the boot loader, partitions may be created
	      in whatever order and in whatever sizes are desired.

       *      Boot disks for EFI-based systems require an EFI System Partition (GPT fdisk internal code 0xEF00) formatted as FAT-32.   The  recom-
	      mended size of this partition is between 100 and 300 MiB.  Boot-related files are stored here. (Note that GNU Parted identifies such
	      partitions as having the "boot flag" set.)

       *      The GRUB 2 boot loader for BIOS-based systems makes use of a BIOS Boot Partition (GPT fdisk internal code 0xEF02), in which the sec-
	      ondary  boot loader is stored, without the benefit of a filesystem. This partition can typically be quite small (roughly 32 KiB to 1
	      MiB), but you should consult your boot loader documentation for details.

       *      If Windows is to boot from a GPT disk, a partition of type Microsoft Reserved (GPT fdisk internal code 0x0C01) is recommended.  This
	      partition  should be about 128 MiB in size. It ordinarily follows the EFI System Partition and immediately precedes the Windows data
	      partitions. (Note that old versions of GNU Parted create all FAT partitions as this type, which actually makes the  partition  unus-
	      able for normal file storage in both Windows and Mac OS X.)

       *      Some OSes' GPT utilities create some blank space (typically 128 MiB) after each partition. The intent is to enable future disk util-
	      ities to use this space. Such free space is not required of GPT disks, but creating it may help in future disk maintenance. You  can
	      use GPT fdisk's relative partition positioning option (specifying the starting sector as '+128M', for instance) to simplify creating
	      such gaps.

OPTIONS

       Interactions with cgdisk occur with its interactive text-mode menus.  The display is broken into two interactive parts:

       *      The partition display area, in which partitions and gaps between them (marked as "free space") are summarized.

       *      The option selection area, in which buttons for the main options appear.

       In addition, the top of the display shows the program's name and version number, the device filename associated	with  the  disk,  and  the
       disk's size in both sectors and IEEE-1541 units (GiB, TiB, and so on).

       You can use the following keys to move among the various options and to select among them:

       up arrow
	      This key moves the partition selection up by one partition.

       down arrow
	      This key moves the partition selection down by one partition.

       Page Up
	      This key moves the partition selection up by one screen.

       Page Down
	      This key moves the partition selection down by one screen.

       right arrow
	      This key moves the option selection to the right by one item.

       left arrow
	      This key moves the option selection to the left by one item.

       Enter  This  key  activates the currently selected option. You can also activate an option by typing the capitalized letter in the option's
	      name on the keyboard, such as a to activate the Align option.

       If more partitions exist than can be displayed in one screen, you can scroll between screens using the partition selection keys, much as in
       a text editor.

       Available options are as described below. (Note that cgdisk provides a much more limited set of options than its sibling gdisk. If you need
       to perform partition table recovery, hybrid MBR modifcation, or other advanced operations, you should consult the gdisk documentation.)

       Align  Change the sector alignment value. Disks with more logical sectors than physical sectors (such as modern	Advanced  Format  drives),
	      some  RAID  configurations,  and	many SSD devices, can suffer performance problems if partitions are not aligned properly for their
	      internal data structures. On new disks, GPT fdisk attempts to align partitions on 2048-sector (1MiB) boundaries  by  default,  which
	      optimizes performance for all of these disk types. On pre-partitioned disks, GPT fdisk attempts to identify the alignment value used
	      on that disk, but will set 8-sector alignment on disks larger than 300 GB even if lesser alignment values are  detected.	In  either
	      case, it can be changed by using this option.

       Backup Save  partition  data to a backup file. You can back up your current in-memory partition table to a disk file using this option. The
	      resulting file is a binary file consisting of the protective MBR, the main GPT header, the backup GPT header, and one  copy  of  the
	      partition table, in that order. Note that the backup is of the current in-memory data structures, so if you launch the program, make
	      changes, and then use this option, the backup will reflect your changes.

       Delete Delete a partition. This action deletes the entry from the partition table but does not disturb the data within the  sectors  origi-
	      nally allocated to the partition on the disk. If a corresponding hybrid MBR partition exists, gdisk deletes it, as well, and expands
	      any adjacent 0xEE (EFI GPT) MBR protective partition to fill the new free space.

       Help   Print brief descriptions of all the options.

       Info   Show detailed partition information. The summary information shown in the partition display area	necessarily  omits  many  details,
	      such  as	the partitions' unique GUIDs and the partitions' sector-exact start and end points. The Info option displays this informa-
	      tion for a single partition.

       Load   Load partition data from a backup file. This option is the reverse of the Backup option. Note that  restoring  partition	data  from
	      anything but the original disk is not recommended.

       naMe   Change  the  GPT name of a partition. This name is encoded as a UTF-16 string, but proper entry and display of anything beyond basic
	      ASCII values requires suitable locale and font support. For the most part, Linux ignores the partition name, but it may be important
	      in some OSes. GPT fdisk sets a default name based on the partition type code. Note that the GPT partition name is different from the
	      filesystem name, which is encoded in the filesystem's data structures. Note also that to activate this item by typing its alphabetic
	      equivalent, you must use M, not the more obvious N, because the latter is used by the next option....

       New    Create  a new partition. You enter a starting sector, a size, a type code, and a name. The start sector can be specified in absolute
	      terms as a sector number or as a position measured in kibibytes (K), mebibytes (M), gibibytes (G), tebibytes (T), or pebibytes  (P);
	      for  instance,  40M specifies a position 40MiB from the start of the disk. You can specify locations relative to the start or end of
	      the specified default range by preceding the number by a '+' symbol, as in +2G to specify a point 2GiB after the default start  sec-
	      tor.  The  size value can use the K, M, G, T, and P suffixes, too. Pressing the Enter key with no input specifies the default value,
	      which is the start of the largest available block for the start sector and the full available size for the size.

       Quit   Quit from the program without saving your changes.  Use this option if you just wanted to view information or if you make a  mistake
	      and want to back out of all your changes.

       Type   Change  a  single  partition's  type  code.  You	enter the type code using a two-byte hexadecimal number. You may also enter a GUID
	      directly, if you have one and cgdisk doesn't know it. If you don't know the type code for your partition, you can type L	to  see  a
	      list of known type codes.

       Verify Verify  disk.  This option checks for a variety of problems, such as incorrect CRCs and mismatched main and backup data. This option
	      does not automatically correct most problems, though; for that, you must use gdisk. If no problems are found, this command  displays
	      a summary of unallocated disk space.

       Write  Write data. Use this command to save your changes.

BUGS

       As  of January 2013 (version 0.8.6), cgdisk should be considered beta software. Although the underlying partition manipulation code is much
       older, the cgdisk ncurses user interface is brand new with GPT fdisk version 0.8.0. Known bugs and limitations include:

       *      The program compiles correctly only on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. In theory, it should  compile  under  Windows  if  the  Ncurses
	      library  for Windows is installed, but I have not tested this capability. Linux versions for x86-64 (64-bit), x86 (32-bit), and Pow-
	      erPC (32-bit) have been tested, with the x86-64 version having seen the  most  testing.  Under  FreeBSD,	32-bit	(x86)  and  64-bit
	      (x86-64) versions have been tested. Only 32-bit versions for Mac OS X has been tested by the author.

       *      The  FreeBSD  version  of the program can't write changes to the partition table to a disk when existing partitions on that disk are
	      mounted. (The same problem exists with many other FreeBSD utilities, such as gpt, fdisk, and dd.) This limitation can be overcome by
	      typing sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 at a shell prompt.

       *      The  program  can  load only up to 128 partitions (4 primary partitions and 124 logical partitions) when converting from MBR format.
	      This limit can be raised by changing the #define MAX_MBR_PARTS line in the basicmbr.h source code  file  and  recompiling;  however,
	      such  a  change will require using a larger-than-normal partition table. (The limit of 128 partitions was chosen because that number
	      equals the 128 partitions supported by the most common partition table size.)

       *      Converting from MBR format sometimes fails because of insufficient space at the start or (more commonly) the end of the disk. Resiz-
	      ing  the	partition  table  (using  the  's'  option in the experts' menu in gdisk) can sometimes overcome this problem; however, in
	      extreme cases it may be necessary to resize a partition using GNU Parted or a similar tool prior to conversion with GPT fdisk.

       *      MBR conversions work only if the disk has correct LBA partition descriptors. These descriptors should be present on any disk over  8
	      GiB in size or on smaller disks partitioned with any but very ancient software.

       *      BSD  disklabel support can create first and/or last partitions that overlap with the GPT data structures. This can sometimes be com-
	      pensated by adjusting the partition table size, but in extreme cases the affected partition(s) may need to be deleted.

       *      Because of the highly variable nature of BSD disklabel structures, conversions from this form may be unreliable -- partitions may be
	      dropped,	converted  in a way that creates overlaps with other partitions, or converted with incorrect start or end values. Use this
	      feature with caution!

       *      Booting after converting an MBR or BSD disklabel disk is likely to be disrupted. Sometimes re-installing a boot loader will fix  the
	      problem,	but  other  times  you	may need to switch boot loaders. Except on EFI-based platforms, Windows through at least Windows 7
	      doesn't support booting from GPT disks. Creating a hybrid MBR (using the 'h' option on the recovery & transformation menu in  gdisk)
	      or abandoning GPT in favor of MBR may be your only options in this case.

       *      The  cgdisk  Verify function and the partition type listing obtainable by typing L in the Type function (or when specifying a parti-
	      tion type while creating a new partition) both currently exit ncurses mode. This limitation is a minor cosmetic  blemish	that  does
	      not affect functionality.

AUTHORS

       Primary author: Roderick W. Smith (rodsmith@rodsbooks.com)

       Contributors:

       * Yves Blusseau (1otnwmz02@sneakemail.com)

       * David Hubbard (david.c.hubbard@gmail.com)

       * Justin Maggard (justin.maggard@netgear.com)

       * Dwight Schauer (dschauer@ti.com)

       * Florian Zumbiehl (florz@florz.de)

SEE ALSO

       cfdisk (8), fdisk (8), gdisk (8), mkfs (8), parted (8), sfdisk (8) sgdisk (8) fixparts (8)

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

       http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2006/tn2166.html

       http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

AVAILABILITY

       The cgdisk command is part of the GPT fdisk package and is available from Rod Smith.

Roderick W. Smith						       0.8.6								 CGDISK(8)