Specifications
systems around.
To format your "disk" drive with a MacOS partition table you can use the pdisk command:
We start printing the help menu, re-initializing the partition table and then printing the new, empty partition
table so that we know the block numbers when we want to create new partitions:
# pdisk /dev/hda
Edit /dev/hda -
Command (? for help): ?
Notes:
Base and length fields are blocks, which vary in size between media.
The base field can be <nth>p; i.e. use the base of the nth partition.
The length field can be a length followed by k, m, g or t to indicate
kilo, mega, giga, or tera bytes; also the length can be <nth>p; i.e. use
the length of the nth partition.
The name of a partition is descriptive text.
Commands are:
h help
p print the partition table
P (print ordered by base address)
i initialize partition map
s change size of partition map
c create new partition (standard MkLinux type)
C (create with type also specified)
n (re)name a partition
d delete a partition
r reorder partition entry in map
w write the partition table
q quit editing (don't save changes)
Command (? for help): i
map already exists
do you want to reinit? [n/y]: y
Command (? for help): p
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Free Extra 1587536 @ 64 (775.2M)
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=1587600 (775.2M)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
At first we create two small partitions that will be used to store a Linux boot image; a compressed Linux
kernel is typically around 400 ... 500 kB, so chosing a partition size of 2 MB is more than generous. 2 MB
coresponds to 4096 disk blocks of 512 bytes each, so we enter:
Command (? for help): C
First block: 64
Length in blocks: 4096
Name of partition: boot0
Type of partition: PPCBoot
Command (? for help): p
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: PPCBoot boot0 4096 @ 64 ( 2.0M)
3: Apple_Free Extra 1583440 @ 4160 (773.2M)
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=1587600 (775.2M)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
To be able to select between two kernel images (for instance when we want to do a field upgrade of the Linux
kernel) we create a second boot partition of exactly the same size:
Command (? for help): C
14.3.23.1. Using a MacOS Partition Table 186