PDISK(8)                OpenBSD System Manager's Manual               PDISK(8)

NAME
     pdisk - HFS(DPME) partition maintenance program

SYNOPSIS
     pdisk [-h] [-i] [-l] [-r] [-c] device

DESCRIPTION
     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 The
     device is usually one of the following:

     /dev/sd0c /dev/sd1c /dev/sd2c /dev/sd3c /dev/sd4c /dev/sd5c /dev/sd6c
     /dev/wd0c /dev/wd1c /dev/wd2c /dev/wd3c


     The options are as follows:

     -v      Prints version number of the program.

     -h      Prints a rather lame set of help messages for the pdisk program.

     -i      Causes pdisk to go into an interactive mode similar to the MacOS
             version of the program.

     -l      List the partition tables for the specified devices

     -r      Prevents pdisk from writing to the device.

     -c      Causes pdisk to always ignore the device size listed in the par-
             tition table and compute the device size by other means.  An ar-
             gument which is simply the name of a indicates that pdisk should
             edit the partition table of that device.

COMMAND MODE
     The list of commands and their explanations are given below.

     h       command 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 OpenBSD type)

     C       create with type also specified

     n       (re)name a partition

     d       delete a partition

     r       reorder partition entry in map

     t       change the type of an existing partition

     w       write the partition table

     q       quit editing (don't save changes)

     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 confir-
     mation prompts on the i and w commands.  The idea being that 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 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.

     Creating more than fifteen partitions is not advised, for compatibility
     reasons.

     The c (create new partition) command is the only one with complicated ar-
     guments.  The first argument is the base address (in blocks) of the par-
     tition.  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 last argument is the name of the parti-
     tion.  This can be a single word without quotes, or a string surrounded
     by single or double quotes.  The type of the created partition is the
     correct type for OpenBSD.

     The C command is identical to the c command, with the addition of a par-
     tition type argument after the other arguments.

     The 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.  I am not aware of any other partition types with
     this limitation.

     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 type) command allows the type of an existing partition to
     be changed.  Examples of valid partition types are: Apple_Free, Ap-
     ple_HFS, and OpenBSD.

     The 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.

     The w (write) command does write the partition map out, but there is cur-
     rently a bug in the interaction between the disk and the kernel where
     disklabel -c device must be issued to cause the kernel to reinterpret the
     new label.


BUGS
     Some people believe there should really be just one disk partitioning
     utility.

     pdisk should be able to create HFS partitions that work.
     Even more help should be available during user input.

SEE ALSO
     fdisk(8), disklabel(8)

AUTHORS
     Eryk Vershen (eryk@apple.com)

OpenBSD 3.0                   September 26, 1997                             2
