Use fdisk to create HFS partition?

[Tim Seufert]

On Tuesday, November 5, 2002, at 08:16  AM, Marc Stergionis wrote:

> Sometime around, no, let's make it exactly at 11:06 AM -0500 on 
> 11/5/02, nathan r. hruby transmitted this wisdom:
>> On Tuesday, November 5, 2002, at 10:50 AM, Marc Stergionis wrote:
>>
>>> I have a 27G partition (on an 80G drive) that I'd like to divide up 
>>> for a YDL install. The other two partitions on the device have OS 
>>> 10.2.1 and OS 9.2.2.
>>>
>>> I know I  can use fdisk to delete and create partitions with types 
>>> for a YDL install. I want to  make a root partition of about 10G and 
>>> leave the rest for another Mac OS (HFS) volume.
>>>
>>> What partition type do I have to input for the  HFS partition? I 
>>> don't want fdisk to delete it and create only free space, because 
>>> AFAIK, Mac OS can't see/recover that.
>>
>> Use Drive Setup or DiskUtility to create your extra HFS partitions 
>> and leave what you want fro linux listed as Free Space, then use 
>> fdisk to chop up the free space for linux.
>
> I was hoping to not have to repartition the entire drive (ie. I don't 
> want to touch the other two HFS partitions). Don't Drive Setup and 
> Disk Utility both destroy all data on the entire device?
>
> I know that pdisk/fdisk can delete and create some partitions without 
> touching/destroying others.

Correct on both counts.  You can do what you want non-destructively 
with pdisk.  Just list all the partitions, and look at the type of your 
existing HFS partitions (should be Apple_HFS or something like that).  
Use the same type for the new HFS partition.  The usual partition 
creation command in pdisk doesn't let you enter a type -- make sure to 
use the alternate version that does.

Now you need to get a HFS file system on that partition.  The Linux 
hformat command can create HFS filesystems, but cannot create HFS+.  (I 
seem to recall it may also be limited to creating no more than a 2GB FS 
or so.)  However, its limitations are a moot point, as the MacOS 9 
Finder and the MacOS X Disk Utility both offer the ability to erase 
individual partitions, and you can select HFS+ as the format even if 
the original was plain HFS.  In fact you don't necessarily have to have 
any FS present to do this; MacOS will complain if it finds a HFS 
partition without a valid HFS/HFS+ filesystem and give you an 
opportunity to format it.