resizing OS X partition

rwallace · Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 2:00 am Post subject: resizing OS X partition

Hello,

I recently started a new job and they are an all Mac shop. They gave me a 17" PowerBook G4 with OS X on it. Being a Linux geek I naturally wanted to try and install Gentoo on it. I don't want to wipe out the OS X partition cause I may still want (have) to use it at work.

So, I downloaded the Gentoo PPC 2004.1 livecd. I read several posts on this forum saying that you can resize a HFS partition with parted, so I tried that. But when I try and use the resize command I get a "Error: Could not detect file system" message. I can't find anything about this on the forum so I was wondering if someone could help me out. I'm probably just missing something simple.

Here's my parted session in it's entirety. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

rwallace · Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 1:45 pm Post subject:

Well, I guess I'll try the 2004.2 livecd and see if that helps at all.

rwallace · Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 11:08 pm Post subject:

Ok, I downloaded and tried the 2004.2 CD. The good news is that parted seems to recognize the hfs+ partition.

The bad news is that it said something about Journalled HFS+ partitions not being supported so I should turn journalling off. It then gave me an option to ignore or cancel. I cowardly canceled and rebooted so I could see if any one has done the ignore option and had things get screwed up.

Anybody have any suggestions?

slick0 · n00b Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 22

Through OSX's Disk Utility, you can turn off the journaling by selecting the partition and pressing Command + J (Or File - Disable Journaling)

-slick0

rwallace · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 2:22 am Post subject:

Well that sorta worked. It started to shrink it but gave me the following messages

JHuber · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 33

i had no luck resizing my partition either. I just made an mage of my OS X Install and put it on another machine, reparitioned my drive, for both linux and os x. i then installed gentoo configured yaboot to make sure everything worked and then reimaged the os x partition. this is a lot more difficulkt if you dont have access to a firewire Hard drive or another mac you can boot into target mode.
_________________
I always thought signatures were silly. Of course I am silly too.......

rwallace · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:20 pm Post subject:

I had thought about that too. The problem is I don't have another Mac to use. I saw in Disk Utility that it could create images of disks, but since I have to be booted into OS X to use Disk Utility and it doesn't want to make an image of a mounted partition I'm outta luck.

There must be a way to boot into single user mode or something and do the same thing, I'm just not sure. But, since I just got this PowerBook a couple of days ago I can wipe it clean without losing much of anything so I may wind up going that route.

I'd rather not have to do that since I have done some playing around with configuration and stuff, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Unless someone can come up with another suggestion? :?:

Rich

drewmanto · n00b Joined: 29 May 2004 Posts: 26 Location: Arizona

i would love to know why some people have success resizing the macosx partition and others fail. IS there not some reasonable explanation why its so hit and miss?

Nice company to buy you a powerbook:) Im in scottsdale are they still hiring :twisted:

j/k
_________________
fvwm Iron men
Ikaro - http://fluxmod.dk/ikaro.dk/public_html/
taviso - http://dev.gentoo.org/~taviso/
Syzygy - http://desintegr.free.fr/fvwm/
Sparks - http://www.bzsparks.com/fvwm/

rrudolph · n00b Joined: 08 Apr 2004 Posts: 6

I just recently heard of a product called ipartition. It supposedly is a very easy to use tool to resize/repartition your hard drive with a GUI front end. Kind of like partition magic for os x. It's a new product (current v.1.0.6) so I haven't tried it yet. I don't know if it is stable or unstable. Has anyone tried this yet?

Richard

mugget · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:27 am Post subject:

there's also an app for OS X called VolumeWorks (i think) that should let you resize your partitions from within OS X.

i've also tried to resize my HFS partitions from the 2004.1 LiveCD with now luck, i don't know what's wrong with it...
_________________
G'Day mate

JHuber · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 33

hmmm if you can get a hold the OS X install cd you can boot up from that and then launch disk utility. at least then you'll be able to put the image on the network somewhere and have it available for when you need to restore from it.
_________________
I always thought signatures were silly. Of course I am silly too.......

chrislee8 · n00b Joined: 26 Jul 2004 Posts: 23

killfire · l33t Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 618