Scroll to navigation

MAC-FDISK(8) Apple Disk Partitioning Manual MAC-FDISK(8)

NAME

mac-fdisk - Apple partition table editor for Linux

SYNOPSIS

mac-fdisk [ -h | --help ] [ -v | --version ] [ -l | --list device ... ]
mac-fdisk [ -r | --readonly ] device ...

DESCRIPTION

mac-fdisk is a command line type program which partitions disks using the standard Apple disk partitioning scheme described in "Inside Macintosh: Devices". The device is usually one of the following:

/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc
/dev/sdd
/dev/sde
/dev/sdf
/dev/sdg
/dev/hda
/dev/hdb


/dev/sda is the first hard disk on the SCSI bus (i.e. the one with the lowest
  id), /dev/sdb is the second hard disk, and so on. The partition is a
  device name followed by a partition number. The partition number is the
  index (starting from one) of the partition map entry in the partition map (and
  the partition map itself occupies the first entry). For example,
  /dev/sda2 is the partition described by the second entry in the
  partiton map on /dev/sda.







OPTIONS



  

  
Prints version number of the mac-fdisk program.

  

  
Prints a list of available commands for the mac-fdisk program.

  

  
Lists the partition tables for the specified device(s). With no
      device(s) given, lists all SCSI and IDE devices found in the
      system.

  

  
Prevents mac-fdisk from writing to the device.








Editing Partition Tables


An argument which is simply the name of a device indicates
    that mac-fdisk should edit the partition table of that device. Once
    started, mac-fdisk presents an interactive command prompt to edit the
    partition table. The partition editing commands are:






h    list available commands
p    print (list) the current edited partition table status
P    print ordered by base address
i    initialize the partition map
s    change size of partition map
b    create new 800K Apple_Bootstrap partition (used by yaboot)
c    create new standard Linux type partition
C    create new partition, specifying the partition type
d    delete a partition
r    reorder partition entry
w    write the partition table to disk
q    quit 






Commands which take arguments prompt for each argument in turn. You can also
  type the arguments separated by spaces and those prompts will be skipped. The
  i and w commands will prompt for confirmation. None of the
  editing you do will actually affect the state of the disk you are partitioning
  until the w command is issued. Then the map in its edited state will be
  permanently written to the disk.

Partitions are always specified by their number, the index of the
    partition entry in the partition map. Many commands will change the index
    numbers of partitions which follow the affected partition; you are
    encouraged to use the p command to print the partition table as
    frequently as necessary. For SCSI disks, the partition table should not
    contain more than fifteen partitions (partition map excluded). IDE disks
    have a limit of 31 partitions.


Here is a more-or-less typical output for the print command:






Command (? for help): p
/dev/sdb


        #                type name              length   base    ( size )  system
/dev/sdb1 Apple_partition_map Apple                 63 @ 1       ( 31.5k)  Partition map
/dev/sdb2      Apple_Driver43 Macintosh             54 @ 64      ( 27.0k)  Driver 4.3
/dev/sdb3      Apple_Driver43 Macintosh             74 @ 118     ( 37.0k)  Driver 4.3
/dev/sdb4  Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh            512 @ 192     (256.0k)  Unknown
/dev/sdb5       Apple_Patches Patch Partition      512 @ 704     (256.0k)  Unknown
/dev/sdb6           Apple_HFS untitled         3072000 @ 1216    (  1.5G)  HFS
/dev/sdb7           Apple_HFS untitled 2        333026 @ 3073216 (162.6M)  HFS
/dev/sdb8          Apple_Free Extra                 10 @ 3406242 (  5.0k)  Free space
Block size=512, Number of Blocks=3406252
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 22, type=0x1
2: @ 118 for 36, type=0xffff







The i (initialize) command prompts for the size of the
    device. You can just type Return to accept the offered size, which should be
    correct.


The b command is a shortcut to create the bootstrap
    partition used on PowerPC NewWorld machines. It is equivalent to creating an
    800k Apple_Bootstrap type partition using the C command
    described below. The sole purpose of this partition is to store the boot
    loader. In multiboot environments, the first bootable partition found on the
    disk takes precedence unless a specific boot partition is set in
    OpenFirmware, so it's best to create the bootstrap partition first, or move
    it to a position before any Apple_HFS or Apple_Boot partitions
    using the r command described below. Then you will still able to boot
    Linux after the occasional OpenFirmware reset.


The c (create new partition) command has three arguments.
    As mentioned above you can type the arguments following the command,
    separated by spaces, or respond to prompts for each argument:



  

   1) The base address of the start of the partition.



  

   You can specify a number in blocks (most likely reading from the
  

   existing partition map) or you can also type a partition number
  

   followed by the letter 'p' to indicate that the new partition
  

   should take the place of that existing free space partition.



  

   2) The length of the partition.



  

   Again, you can specify a number in blocks or type a partition
  

   number followed by the letter 'p' to indicate use of the entire
  

   partition. You can also type a number followed by 'k', 'm', or
  

   'g' to indicate the size in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes
  

   respectively. (These are powers of 1024, of course, not powers
  

   of 1000.)



  

   3) The name of the partition.



  

   This can be a single word without quotes, or a string surrounded
  

   by single or double quotes. It is best to name any swap partition
  

   you create `swap'; other partition names are up to you. The names
  

   are not visible to Linux.


The C command is identical to the c command, with
    the addition of a partition type argument after the other arguments. The
    partition type used for Linux swap and data partitons is
    APPLE_UNIX_SVR2 (this is the partition type created by the c
    command). Under normal circumstances, you should not need to use this
    command.


The d command deletes the partition number specified,
    replacing that partition with partitionable free space.


The r (reorder) command allows the index number of
    partitions to be changed. The index numbers are constrained to be a
    contiguous sequence. mac-fdisk will enforce this constraint by
    recalculating the partition numbers after each insert, delete or reorder
    operation. OpenFirmware looks for bootable partitions in the order specified
    by the index. The partitions are not moved on the disk. This command takes
    two arguments, the number of the partition to be moved and the partition
    number it should become.


The w command writes the partition map out to disk. Note
    that partition maps for disks with mounted partitions cannot immediately be
    reinterpreted by the kernel. In order to use the new partition map you must
    reboot. Within the Debian installer system, mac-fdisk is normally
    invoked before any partitions are mounted, thus a reboot is not necessary
    before continuing the installation.


The q command terminates the program. If there was no
    w command issued during the program run, then there will be no effect
    on the disk.








BUGS


Some people believe there should really be just one disk
    partitioning utility.


mac-fdisk should be able to create HFS partitions that
    work. Currently, if a pre-existing HFS partition is resized, MacOS will
    continue to use the partition size stored in the HFS 'superblock' instead of
    using the size from the partition table (the MacOS volume on the partition
    remains valid even though the sizes don't match anymore). This can have
    undesired side effects especially when creating a smaller HFS partition
    followed by a few Linux partitions in place of the previous HFS partition
    space. To avoid this issue, create MacOS partitions within MacOS and then
    don't resize them in mac-fdisk.








SEE ALSO


fdisk(8), mkswap(8), mkfs(8)






AUTHOR


Eryk Vershen (eryk@apple.com), man page revised by Chris Tillman
    (tillman@azstarnet.com)







  

    1 December 2001
    Debian