pdisk man page on OpenBSD

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

NAME
     pdisk - HFS(DPME) partition maintenance program

SYNOPSIS
     pdisk [-hilrv] disk

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 fdisk(8).

     The options are as follows:

     -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 Mac OS
	     version of the program.

     -l	     List the partition tables for the specified disk.

     -r	     Prevents pdisk from writing to the disk.

     -v	     Prints version number of the program.

     disk    Specify the disk to operate on.  It can be specified either by
	     its full pathname or an abbreviated disk form.  In its
	     abbreviated form, the path to the device, the `r' denoting ``raw
	     device'', and the partition letter, can all be omitted.  For
	     example, the first IDE disk can be specified as either
	     /dev/rwd0c, /dev/wd0c, or wd0.

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
     confirmation 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 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.

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

     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 last 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 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
     partition type argument after the other arguments.

     The n (name) command allows the name of a partition to be changed.	 The
     name must not contain any spaces.	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,
     Apple_HFS, and OpenBSD.

     The i (initialize) command prompts for the size of the disk.  This was
     done to get around a bug in the kernel where it reports the wrong size
     for the disk.

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

SEE ALSO
     disklabel(8), fdisk(8), newfs(8)

HISTORY
     The pdisk utility was originally developed for MkLinux.

AUTHORS
     Eryk Vershen

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

     pdisk should be able to create HFS partitions that work.

     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.

     Even more help should be available during user input.

OpenBSD 4.9			August 26, 2010			   OpenBSD 4.9
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