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Lenroc
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Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 21
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 Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 8:46 pm Post subject: Repurposing an HFS drive -- Need to keep any partitions? |
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hi,
I have a Blue & White G3 that I'm trying to install Gentoo on. Not going too well, but that's a story for another thread (if I can't figure out the problems myself...).
Basically, I have 2 drives. /dev/hda has various partitions including 2 HFS (+?) partitions, one for MacOS 9 and one for OSX.
/dev/hdb has one HFS partition and a number of other partitions that Apple deemed necessary to put there. I'm trying to figure out which of the partitions, if any, I need to keep.
The drive is ~30GB, and it has an 8GB HFS partition that I plan on keeping. But there are lots of other partitions too. Here's what mac-fdisk says:
| Code: |
/dev/hdb
# type name length base ( size ) system
dump: name /dev/hdb len 8
/dev/hdb1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hdb2 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 64 ( 28.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/hdb3 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 120 ( 28.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/hdb4 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 176 ( 28.0k) Unknown
/dev/hdb5 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 232 ( 28.0k) Unknown
/dev/hdb6 Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288 (256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hdb7 Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800 (256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hdb8 Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312 (256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hdb9 Apple_HFS Socrates_1 16846144 @ 1824 ( 8.0G) HFS
[...]
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I believe I've read that /dev/hdb1 is important (I'm not certain though, since most of the docs dealing with 'dual-booting' MacOS and Gentoo seem to describe using only 1 drive...). What I can't tell, though, is whether /dev/hdb2 through /dev/hdb8 need to be there.
Do the "Driver" and "Patches" partitions need to be there? When I go to make my partitions for Gentoo, should I just delete all of them and start fresh? Or should I just add on (/dev/hdb10 for swap, /dev/hdb11 for root, etc.)? |
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bruda
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 376
Location: Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:27 am Post subject: |
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Hi.
If you plan to access your disk (hdb) only from within Linux and Mac OS X, then the partitions hdb2 to hdb8 can be safely erased. They are need only for Mac OS 9.x and below. (In fact I am not even sure whether their existence is a requirement even for Mac OS 9.x and its brethen to access a disk, but they are certainly needed to boot it from the disk and they are certainly not needed at all for Linux and Mac OS X.)
The first partiton on the other hand is on PPC the partition map itself and should not be erased under any circumstance I can think of.
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porodzila
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Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 307
Location: Terrapin Station
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:27 am Post subject: |
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you just need the partition map and a / and a swap maybe for linux.
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nesnimda
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Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 33
Location: my own little world ^^
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:09 am Post subject: |
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This is true, but last I played with mac-fdisk, it wasn't able to delete those partitions (however it did hint that future versions would be able to). An easy solution is to use apple's partition manager. If it won't let you use it while you're in OS X, then boot from the OS X cd and click on the file menu option to load disk utility. You'd also want to select the other option to boot from that hard drive so that yaboot gets a chance to do its magic ^_^
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porodzila
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Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 307
Location: Terrapin Station
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:20 am Post subject: |
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wow, how long ago did you use mac-fdisk ?
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Lenroc
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Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:05 am Post subject: |
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| bruda wrote: | | If you plan to access your disk (hdb) only from within Linux and Mac OS X, then the partitions hdb2 to hdb8 can be safely erased. They are need only for Mac OS 9.x and below. |
Great, thanks for the response, much appreciated! 
Now I have to decide if I ever plan to boot into OS9 again... well, I guess not a big deal, since the partitions in question only take up all of 624k 
| bruda wrote: | | The first partiton on the other hand is on PPC the partition map itself and should not be erased under any circumstance I can think of. |
That makes sense. Is that what mac-fdisk is updating when I write out my changes? |
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bruda
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 376
Location: Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Lenroc wrote: | | Now I have to decide if I ever plan to boot into OS9 again... well, I guess not a big deal, since the partitions in question only take up all of 624k |
They did piss me off before deciding to get rid of them, simply because they eat up partition numbers so I was not able to set up my usual partition scheme (which involves /tmp, /var on different volumes, etc.). In terms of space they are utterly negligible.
| Quote: | | bruda wrote: | | The first partiton on the other hand is on PPC the partition map itself and should not be erased under any circumstance I can think of. |
That makes sense. Is that what mac-fdisk is updating when I write out my changes? |
Yes.
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Gentoo on PPC
