PDISK(8) | System Manager's Manual | PDISK(8) |
pdisk
— Apple
partition table editor
pdisk |
[-acdfhilLrv ] [--abbr ]
[--compute_size ] [--debug ]
[--fname ] [--help ]
[--interactive ] [--list ]
[--logical ] [--readonly ]
[--version ] [device
...] |
pdisk
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
fdisk(8).
Supported options are:
-a
--abbr
-c
--compute_size
pdisk
to always ignore the device size
listed in the partition table and compute the device size by other
means.-d
--debug
-f
--fname
-h
--help
-i
--interactive
pdisk
to go into an interactive mode
similar to the MacOS version of the program.-l
--list
pdisk
tries to list partition tables for all
available drives. Otherwise, pdisk
lists the
partition tables for the specified devices.-L
--logical
-r
--readonly
pdisk
from writing to the device.-v
--version
pdisk
.An argument which is simply the name of a
device indicates that pdisk
should edit the partition table of that device.
The current top level editing commands are:
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
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 i
and
w
commands, since if we expect you to confirm the
decision, we shouldn't undermine that by allowing you to be precipitate
about it.
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.
The 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 ‘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 ‘p’ to use the size of
that partition or can be a number followed by ‘k’,
‘m’, or ‘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 C
command is similar to the
c
command, with the addition of a partition type
argument after the other arguments.
The i
(initalize) command prompts for the
size of the device.
The n
(name) command allows the name of a
partition to be changed.
The r
(reorder) command allows the index
number of partitions to be changed. The index numbers are constrained to be
a contiguous sequence.
The t
(change partition type) command
allows the type of a partition to be changed.
The w
(write) command writes the partition
map out.
The pdisk
utility was originally developed
for MkLinux.
Eryk Vershen
Some people believe there should really be just one disk partitioning utility.
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.
The --logical
option has not been heavily
tested.
April 24, 2003 | macOS 14.6 |