NetBSD/dist/pdisk/pdisk.8

.\"	$NetBSD: pdisk.8,v 1.16 2003/04/24 12:28:12 wiz Exp $
.Dd April 24, 2003
.Os
.Dt PDISK 8
.Sh NAME
.Nm pdisk
.Nd Apple partition table editor
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl acdfhilLrv
.Op Fl -abbr
.Op Fl -compute_size
.Op Fl -debug
.Op Fl -fname
.Op Fl -help
.Op Fl -interactive
.Op Fl -list Ar device
.Op Fl -logical
.Op Fl -readonly
.Op Fl -version
.Op Ar device ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is a menu driven program which partitions disks using the standard Apple
disk partitioning scheme described in "Inside Macintosh: Devices".
It does not support the Intel/DOS partitioning scheme supported by
.Xr fdisk 8 .
.Pp
Supported options are:
.Bl -tag -width "--compute_sizeXX" -compact
.It Fl a
.It Fl -abbr
Abbreviate the partition types shown in the partition list.
.It Fl c
.It Fl -compute_size
Causes
.Nm
to always ignore the device size listed in the partition table
and compute the device size by other means.
.It Fl d
.It Fl -debug
Turns on debugging.
Doesn't add that much output, but does add a new command
.Sq x
to the editing commands that accesses an eclectic bunch of
undocumented functionality.
.It Fl f
.It Fl -fname
Show HFS volume names instead of partition name when available.
.It Fl h
.It Fl -help
Prints a short help message.
.It Fl i
.It Fl -interactive
Causes
.Nm
to go into an interactive mode similar to the MacOS version of the program.
.It Fl l
.It Fl -list Ar device
.\"If no
.\".Ar device
.\"argument is given,
.\".Nm
.\"tries to list partition tables for all available hard drives.
.\"Otherwise,
.\".Nm
.\"lists
List
the partition tables for the specified
.Ar devices .
.It Fl L
.It Fl -logical
Show partition limits in logical blocks.
Default is physical blocks.
.It Fl r
.It Fl -readonly
Prevents
.Nm
from writing to the device.
.It Fl v
.It Fl -version
Prints the version number of
.Nm .
.El
.Ss Editing Partition Tables
An argument which is simply the name of a
.Ar device
indicates that
.Nm
should edit the partition table of that device.
.Pp
The current top level editing commands are:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
C    (create with type also specified)
c    create new partition
d    delete a partition
h    command help
i    initialize partition map
n    (re)name a partition
P    (print ordered by base address)
p    print the partition table
q    quit editing (don't save changes)
r    reorder partition entry in map
s    change size of partition map
t    change the type of an existing partition
w    write the partition table
.Ed
.Pp
Commands which take arguments prompt for each argument in turn.
You can also type any number of the arguments separated by spaces
and those prompts will be skipped.
The only exception to typeahead are the confirmation prompts on the
.Ic i
and
.Ic w
commands,
since if we expect you to confirm the decision, we shouldn't undermine
that by allowing you to be precipitate about it.
.Pp
Partitions are always specified by their number,
which is the index of the partition entry in the partition map.
Most of the commands will change the index numbers of all partitions
after the affected partition.
You are advised to print the table as frequently as necessary.
.Pp
.\"Creating more than fifteen partitions is not advised.
.\"There may be a bug in old linux kernels which causes
.\"access to the whole disk fail if more than fifteen partitions are in the map.
.\".Pp
The
.Ic c
(create new partition) command is the only one with complicated arguments.
The first argument is the base address (in blocks) of the partition.
Besides a raw number, you can also specify a partition number followed
by the letter
.Sq p
to indicate that the first block of the new partition should be the same
as the first block of that existing free space partition.
The second argument is the length of the partition in blocks.
This can be a raw number or can be a partition number followed by the
letter
.Sq p
to use the size of that partition or can be a number followed
by
.Sq k ,
.Sq m ,
or
.Sq g
to indicate the size in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes respectively.
(These are powers of 1024, of course, not powers of 1000.)
The third argument is the name of the partition.
This can be a single word without quotes, or a string surrounded by
single or double quotes.
The type of the created partition will be Apple_UNIX_SVR2, which is
the correct type for use with
.Nx .
This command will prompt for the unix filesystem slice to set
in the Block Zero Block bits.
.Pp
The
.Ic C
command is similar to the
.Ic c
command, with the addition of a partition type argument after the
other arguments.
Choosing a type of Apple_UNIX_SVR2 will prompt for
the unix filesystem slice to set in the Block Zero Block bits.
.Pp
The
.Ic i
(initalize) command prompts for the size of the device.
.\"This was done to get around a bug in the kernel where it reports the wrong
.\"size for the device.
.Pp
The
.Ic n
(name) command allows the name of a partition to be changed.
Note that the various "Apple_Driver" partitions depend
on the name field for proper functioning.
We are not aware of any other partition types with this limitation.
.Pp
The
.Ic r
(reorder) command allows the index number of partitions to be changed.
The index numbers are constrained to be a contiguous sequence.
.Pp
The
.Ic t
(change partition type) command allows the type of a partition to be
changed.
Changing the type to Apple_UNIX_SVR2 will prompt for the
unix filesystem slice to set in the Block Zero Block bits.
.Pp
The
.Ic w
(write) command writes the partition map out.
.\"but there is currently a bug in the interaction between MkLinux and Mach
.\"which causes the partition map not to be reinterpreted.
In order to use the new partition map you must reboot.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr fdisk 8 ,
.Xr newfs 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
utility was originally developed for MkLinux.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Eryk Vershen
.Sh BUGS
Some people believe there should really be just one disk partitioning utility.
.Pp
.\".Nm
.\"should be able to create HFS partitions that work.
.\".Pp
Filesystem volume names are out of place in a partition utility.
This utility supports HFS volume names, but not volume names
of any other filesystem types.
.Pp
The
.Fl -logical
option has not been heavily tested.
.Pp
.Nm
will first try to use
.Xr lseek 2
with
.Dv SEEK_END
to compute the size of the device.
If this fails, it will try a binary search using
.Xr lseek 2
and
.Xr read 2
to find the end of the device.
This has been observed to fail on some raw disk devices.
As a workaround, try using the block device instead.
.Nm
should probably read the disklabel using the
.Dv DIOCGDINFO
.Xr ioctl 2
to get the device size instead.