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

-v | --version
    Prints version number of the mac-fdisk program.

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

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

-r | --readonly
    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)