| blob | 2b62506b6659cf8e0cafbfcc5295e6ee6f32d615 |
1 .\" $NetBSD: pdisk.8,v 1.16 2003/04/24 12:28:12 wiz Exp $
2 .Dd April 24, 2003
3 .Dt PDISK 8
4 .Os
5 .Sh NAME
6 .Nm pdisk
7 .Nd Apple partition table editor
8 .Sh SYNOPSIS
9 .Nm
10 .Op Fl acdfhilLrv
11 .Op Fl -abbr
12 .Op Fl -compute_size
13 .Op Fl -debug
14 .Op Fl -fname
15 .Op Fl -help
16 .Op Fl -interactive
17 .Op Fl -list Ar device
18 .Op Fl -logical
19 .Op Fl -readonly
20 .Op Fl -version
21 .Op Ar device ...
22 .Sh DESCRIPTION
23 .Nm
24 is a menu driven program which partitions disks using the standard Apple
25 disk partitioning scheme described in "Inside Macintosh: Devices".
26 It does not support the Intel/DOS partitioning scheme supported by
27 .Xr fdisk 8 .
28 .Pp
29 Supported options are:
30 .Bl -tag -width "--compute_sizeXX" -compact
31 .It Fl a
32 .It Fl -abbr
33 Abbreviate the partition types shown in the partition list.
34 .It Fl c
35 .It Fl -compute_size
36 Causes
37 .Nm
38 to always ignore the device size listed in the partition table
39 and compute the device size by other means.
40 .It Fl d
41 .It Fl -debug
42 Turns on debugging.
43 Doesn't add that much output, but does add a new command
44 .Sq x
45 to the editing commands that accesses an eclectic bunch of
46 undocumented functionality.
47 .It Fl f
48 .It Fl -fname
49 Show HFS volume names instead of partition name when available.
50 .It Fl h
51 .It Fl -help
52 Prints a short help message.
53 .It Fl i
54 .It Fl -interactive
55 Causes
56 .Nm
57 to go into an interactive mode similar to the MacOS version of the program.
58 .It Fl l
59 .It Fl -list Ar device
60 .\"If no
61 .\".Ar device
62 .\"argument is given,
63 .\".Nm
64 .\"tries to list partition tables for all available hard drives.
65 .\"Otherwise,
66 .\".Nm
67 .\"lists
68 List
69 the partition tables for the specified
70 .Ar devices .
71 .It Fl L
72 .It Fl -logical
73 Show partition limits in logical blocks.
74 Default is physical blocks.
75 .It Fl r
76 .It Fl -readonly
77 Prevents
78 .Nm
79 from writing to the device.
80 .It Fl v
81 .It Fl -version
82 Prints the version number of
83 .Nm .
84 .El
85 .Ss Editing Partition Tables
86 An argument which is simply the name of a
87 .Ar device
88 indicates that
89 .Nm
90 should edit the partition table of that device.
91 .Pp
92 The current top level editing commands are:
93 .Bd -unfilled -offset indent
94 C (create with type also specified)
95 c create new partition
96 d delete a partition
97 h command help
98 i initialize partition map
99 n (re)name a partition
100 P (print ordered by base address)
101 p print the partition table
102 q quit editing (don't save changes)
103 r reorder partition entry in map
104 s change size of partition map
105 t change the type of an existing partition
106 w write the partition table
107 .Ed
108 .Pp
109 Commands which take arguments prompt for each argument in turn.
110 You can also type any number of the arguments separated by spaces
111 and those prompts will be skipped.
112 The only exception to typeahead are the confirmation prompts on the
113 .Ic i
114 and
115 .Ic w
116 commands,
117 since if we expect you to confirm the decision, we shouldn't undermine
118 that by allowing you to be precipitate about it.
119 .Pp
120 Partitions are always specified by their number,
121 which is the index of the partition entry in the partition map.
122 Most of the commands will change the index numbers of all partitions
123 after the affected partition.
124 You are advised to print the table as frequently as necessary.
125 .Pp
126 .\"Creating more than fifteen partitions is not advised.
127 .\"There may be a bug in old linux kernels which causes
128 .\"access to the whole disk fail if more than fifteen partitions are in the map.
129 .\".Pp
130 The
131 .Ic c
132 (create new partition) command is the only one with complicated arguments.
133 The first argument is the base address (in blocks) of the partition.
134 Besides a raw number, you can also specify a partition number followed
135 by the letter
136 .Sq p
137 to indicate that the first block of the new partition should be the same
138 as the first block of that existing free space partition.
139 The second argument is the length of the partition in blocks.
140 This can be a raw number or can be a partition number followed by the
141 letter
142 .Sq p
143 to use the size of that partition or can be a number followed
144 by
145 .Sq k ,
146 .Sq m ,
147 or
148 .Sq g
149 to indicate the size in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes respectively.
150 (These are powers of 1024, of course, not powers of 1000.)
151 The third argument is the name of the partition.
152 This can be a single word without quotes, or a string surrounded by
153 single or double quotes.
154 The type of the created partition will be Apple_UNIX_SVR2, which is
155 the correct type for use with
156 .Nx .
157 This command will prompt for the unix filesystem slice to set
158 in the Block Zero Block bits.
159 .Pp
160 The
161 .Ic C
162 command is similar to the
163 .Ic c
164 command, with the addition of a partition type argument after the
165 other arguments.
166 Choosing a type of Apple_UNIX_SVR2 will prompt for
167 the unix filesystem slice to set in the Block Zero Block bits.
168 .Pp
169 The
170 .Ic i
171 (initalize) command prompts for the size of the device.
172 .\"This was done to get around a bug in the kernel where it reports the wrong
173 .\"size for the device.
174 .Pp
175 The
176 .Ic n
177 (name) command allows the name of a partition to be changed.
178 Note that the various "Apple_Driver" partitions depend
179 on the name field for proper functioning.
180 We are not aware of any other partition types with this limitation.
181 .Pp
182 The
183 .Ic r
184 (reorder) command allows the index number of partitions to be changed.
185 The index numbers are constrained to be a contiguous sequence.
186 .Pp
187 The
188 .Ic t
189 (change partition type) command allows the type of a partition to be
190 changed.
191 Changing the type to Apple_UNIX_SVR2 will prompt for the
192 unix filesystem slice to set in the Block Zero Block bits.
193 .Pp
194 The
195 .Ic w
196 (write) command writes the partition map out.
197 .\"but there is currently a bug in the interaction between MkLinux and Mach
198 .\"which causes the partition map not to be reinterpreted.
199 In order to use the new partition map you must reboot.
200 .Sh SEE ALSO
201 .Xr fdisk 8 ,
202 .Xr newfs 8
203 .Sh HISTORY
204 The
205 .Nm
206 utility was originally developed for MkLinux.
207 .Sh AUTHORS
208 .An Eryk Vershen
209 .Sh BUGS
210 Some people believe there should really be just one disk partitioning utility.
211 .Pp
212 .\".Nm
213 .\"should be able to create HFS partitions that work.
214 .\".Pp
215 Filesystem volume names are out of place in a partition utility.
216 This utility supports HFS volume names, but not volume names
217 of any other filesystem types.
218 .Pp
219 The
220 .Fl -logical
221 option has not been heavily tested.
222 .Pp
223 .Nm
224 will first try to use
225 .Xr lseek 2
226 with
227 .Dv SEEK_END
228 to compute the size of the device.
229 If this fails, it will try a binary search using
230 .Xr lseek 2
231 and
232 .Xr read 2
233 to find the end of the device.
234 This has been observed to fail on some raw disk devices.
235 As a workaround, try using the block device instead.
236 .Nm
237 should probably read the disklabel using the
238 .Dv DIOCGDINFO
239 .Xr ioctl 2
240 to get the device size instead.