To install a new disk in your system, you will need to physically install the hard drive and configure it in your computer's BIOS. Linux will detect the new drive automatically in most cases. You could type dmesg | more to find out what the drive is called. The second IDE drive in your system will be named /dev/hdb. We will assume that the new drive is /dev/hdb.

On older kernels IDE devices are named as /dev/hd[a-d], where a is used for the primary master IDE device, b is the primary slave, c the secondary master and d is the secondary slave IDE device. Since IDE devices are getting replaced by SATA (Serial ATA) devices, modern devices are named /dev/sd*

You must now partition your new disk. As root in a shell type:

   fdisk /dev/hdb 
   

This will take you to a prompt that says Command (m for help):. At the prompt, type p to display the existing partitions. If you have partitions that you need to delete, type d, then at the prompt, type the number of the partition that you wish to delete. Next, type n to create the new partition. Type 1 (assuming that this will be the first partition on the new drive), and hit enter. Then you will be prompted for the cylinder that you want to start with on the drive. Next, you will be asked for the ending cylinder for the partition. Repeat these steps until all partitions are created.

To put a clean filesystem on the first partition of your newly partitioned drive, type:

    mkfs /dev/hdb1 
    

Repeat this step for all partitions. You can use the -t parameter to define the filesystem type to build, e.g. ext2, ext3, xfs, minix etc. (the section called “Creating Filesystems”).

You will now need to decide the mount point for each new partition on your drive. We will assume /new. Type:

    mkdir /new 
    

to create the mount point for your drive. Now you will need to edit /etc/fstab. You will want to make an entry at the end of the file similar to this:

    /dev/hdb1       /new     ext2          defaults       1   1
    

After you have created a similar entry for each partition, write the file.

    mount -a 
    

will mount the partitions in the directory that you specified in /etc/fstab.

When a kernel interacts with ext2 or ext3 filesystems the tune2fs command can be used to configure the interaction. Noteworthy options of this command are:

The hdparm command is used to set/get SATA/IDE device parameters. It provides a command line interface to various kernel interfaces supported by the Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata" subsystem and the older IDE driver subsystem. Newer (from 2008) USB disk enclosures now support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) so they might also work with hdparm.

The syntax for this command is:

  hdparm [options] [device]
  

Frequently used options are:

See also man hdparm for more information.

The sdparm command is used to access SCSI mode pages, read VPD (Vital Product Data) pages and send simple SCSI commands.

The utility fetches and can change SCSI device mode pages. Inquiry data including Vital Product Data pages can also be displayed. Commands associated with starting and stopping the medium; loading and unloading the medium; and other housekeeping functionality may also be issued by this utility.

Current kernels also support dynamic setting of kernel parameters. The easiest method to set kernel parameters is by modifying the /proc filesystem. You can use the echo command to set parameters, in the format:

echo "value" > /proc/kernel/parameter 

e.g. to activate IP-forwarding:

echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

The changes take effect immediately but are lost during reboot.

The /proc/ filesystem can also be queried. To see which interrupts a system uses, for example you could issue

# cat /proc/interrupts

which generates output that may look like this:

           CPU0       
  0:   16313284          XT-PIC  timer
  1:     334558          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  7:      26565          XT-PIC  3c589_cs
  8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:          0          XT-PIC  OPL3-SA (MPU401)
 10:          4          XT-PIC  MSS audio codec
 11:          0          XT-PIC  usb-uhci
 12:     714357          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
 13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu
 14:     123824          XT-PIC  ide0
 15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0

Kernel tuning can be automated by putting the echo commands in the startup scripts (e.g. /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Some distributions support the sysctl command. The sysctl command is used to modify kernel parameters at runtime. The parameters that can be modified by this command are listed in the /proc/sys directory tree. Procfs is required for sysctl support under Linux. sysctl can be used to read as well as write kernel parameters.

Frequently used options of the sysctl command are: