erasing partition with fdisk or pdisk

[kylos]

After installing a 40 gig drive in my ibook, I partitioned it with several partitions, including an eventual linux partition. Now that I'm ready to install yellow dog, I realized that I should have just left the space free. I now need to free this partition.

Having read all the man pages relevant, I'm pretty sure I can use fdisk or preferably Apple's pdisk to do this. I've never done this, though, and I don't want to risk messing things up. The partition is the 12th in the partition map obtained from pdisk and has the name Apple_UFS_Untitled_3. Any info on how to get rid of this partition safely would be greatly appreciated.

 

[LeeTom]

Do you want to just delete this partition, or make it into a Mac-compatible drive that you can see on your desktop, or actually join it with another partition? I'm not sure I understand what you want to do with it.

Have you tried using Disk Utility? (in applications -> utilities)

Lee Tom

 

[janey]

you might want to consider installing Gentoo instead (http://gentoo.org). I dunno, but imo gentoo > ydl.
Uhm...if theres nothing on the partition right now, then just leave it. When you install Linux you can repartition it (the usual ext2/ext3/reiserfs/jfs/whatever you want to use) to your liking with the tools provided.

 

[kylos]

After checking the ydl install guides, I'm pretty sure you need to start with free space to create the linux partitions (boot(1MB), swap(256MB), and system and files(whatever you can give it)) or reformat the entire drive. There did not seem to be an option to install only over a single partition while leaving the rest of the disk intact.

@uber I've downloaded the ydl iso's already. Don't have time to mess with gentoo right now. I might check out gentoo later, but, I want to get going with what I have right now. Does gentoo support apple's airport hardware? Cause that will be crucial in any install I use.

 

[cb911]

i'm with übergeek. Gentoo is the way to go. but it does take a while to get installed and working and takes alot of reading (well, at least if it's your first linux install)

also, you probably dont' want to use fdisk. i made that mistake and... well... messed stuff up and had fun installing OS X again.

use macfdisk, that'll do the trick.

and if you can't install onto a single partition without touching the rest of the disk, then that means that YDL just sucks. get Gentoo.

 

[kylos]

He he. I read the instructions a little more carefully this time and found that there is a utility in the ydl installation that will allow you to erase and create partitions. Basically a gui for pdisk as far as I can tell. I'll be installing ydl as soon as I have an opening in my schedule.

I'll probably mess with gentoo and other linux variants as I get more experience with linux. I only have one computer (and can't really afford another), though, so I'm restricted in how much I can mess with at one time. Downtime is a big issue for me.