Partitioning strategy & MacOS file integrity when | tar
Alex Avriette
This post may get rather lengthy, but I've got a lot on my mind given
recent turns and twists re: my quest to get my BW G3 running XF4 (and
indeed everything else) smoothly.
The last post I sent to the list contained the infamous
hda: interrupt lost
error. I had looked through the archives and not seen anything.
Curiously, I searched through the same archives on my hard disk with
grep (I keep the raw archives locally in case I cant get ppp up for some
reason) and there were lots of incidences. It's a BootX problem. So now
I need to create a "Apple_Bootstrap" partition and get yaboot running.
The problem with this is I need to repartition my disk.
I had a *little* foresight when partitioning this disk, and I fancy
myself rather responsible when it comes to setting a system up. This
could be a lot worse. :) So, the partition map is below:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 54 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 74 @ 118
4: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 192
5: Apple_HFS untitled 1572864 @ 704 (768.0M)
6: Apple_HFS untitled 2 1600 @ 1573568
7: Apple_HFS untitled 3 8585216 @ 1575168 ( 4.1G)
8: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root 6291456 @ 10160384 ( 3.0G)
9: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home 20971520 @ 16451840 ( 10.0G)
10: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 2560000 @ 37423360 ( 1.2G)
11: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 exchange 147456 @ 39983360 ( 72.0M)
12: Apple_Free Extra 1687 @ 40130816
I know the more astute out there have raised eyebrows already. Allow me
to clarify. Swap is 1.2GB because a friend of mine (who is accustomed to
RAM sizes > 10GB) insisted that "more cant hurt." Physical RAM is 192MB.
I'd like to *eliminate* the swap partition and use mkswap to create a
400MB (or the nearest ^2) *file* on /home. (goal #1)
Now, if you'll note the output from df:
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda8 3096336 115664 2823388 4% /
/dev/hda9 10321208 6671292 3125628 68% /home
I also got a little trigger-happy and did not create a realistic /
paritition. It just simply isn't necessary for it to be 3GB. The reason
/ is so empty is that /usr was moved from / to /home/usr after /
exceeded 95% full. So goal #2 is to create a /usr partition.
Furthermore, since I need to do a repartition here, I want to clean up
the MacOS partitions. I essentially created them the way I created the
linux partitions: /boot, /home, and swap. Only I goofed when I created
the swap partition and it's tiny. <yes thats a rather sheepish grin>
I've been thinking about this for a while. The more I use linux, the
less I am able to tolerate MacOS, and the more it is clear that it is
simply eating up 5GB of my disk. My plan is to take both partitions and
combine them. This wouldnt be easy except that theyre both rather
unused. /dev/hda7 has about 1.5GB of stuff, and /dev/hda5 has about
500MB of stuff. So all told, I think I can get away with *one* partition
of 2.5GB. (goal #3) The implementation of this is maybe a little screwy,
but I think there's an easy way to pull it off: tar. I think that it is
possible to mount /dev/hda7 and /dev/hda5 and tar them into two files on
/dev/hda9 (/home). Then, delete the partitions, /dev/hda5-7 and create a
new partition of 2.5GB.
I'm not sure of the feasability of that move, however, as I am aware
that moving Mac files across PC's requires either uu-encoding them or
binhexing them. Now, I've already tried the tar command, archiving a
MacOS partition to a linux partition, and it worked. But, of course, I
didn't test the integrity of *every* file. The thing is, if you tar/gz
the MacOS partitions, they wind up being less than 1.2GB. I think,
however, if they were tar.gz.uu'ed, they would be considerably *larger*,
and I may not have the space necessary. Note that the partitions
uncompressed are 2.5GB and the space available on /home is 3.1GB. Has
anyone tried a manouver like this?
So, ideally, I'd be able to take the following plan of action:
tar / to a file on /home
tar (& uu) /dev/hda5 to a file on /home
tar (& uu) /dev/hda7 to a file on /home
delete /dev/hda5
delete /dev/hda6
delete /dev/hda7
create new 2.5GB MacOS partition
untar (& unuu) MacOS tarballs from /home to new partition
move /home to abut the new MacOS partition (hda5)
delete /dev/hda10 (swap partition)
delete exchange partition
create new / partition (hda7), 500MB
create new /usr partition (hda8), 3.5GB
create new /mp3 partition (hda9), 3GB
create new Apple_Bootstrap partition (hda10), 50MB
use mkswap to create a new 400MB file on /home
Finally, the partition map should look more like:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 54 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 74 @ 118
4: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 192
5: Apple_HFS MacOS @ ( 2.5G)
6: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home @ ( 10.0G)
7: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root @ ( .5G)
8: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 usr @ ( 3.5G)
9: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 mp3 @ ( 3.5G)
10: Apple_Bootstrap ybin @ ( 50MB)
Concerns:
I dont think pdisk can "move" a partition. I know that FWB's Hard Disk
Toolkit can move partitions and I think Silverlining can... But I've
never had to do this in linux before. I know that DiskTools cant do what
I need to do. Is there a supermagicalpartitioningutility out there?
Above, regarding MacOS file integrity.
I do NOT have the disk space to back up 22GB of data. All told, it boils
down to about 12GB of stuff.
Can anyone cast light on this endeavour?
Thanks!
Alex
** Sent via the linuxppc-user mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/