Partition table annoyance

[astromac]

I've got a question about the partition map. I'm running 10.2.2 and I've got a few partitions I want to get rid of (OS 9 and Linux). Because I don't want to destroy my OS X partition I turned to pdisk. As it turns out it tells me that it can't write to the partition table. I logged in as root and tried again. Same thing. I make a boot CD (using BootCD) and tried using pdisk from the CD. Same results. I went into OS 9 with pdisk. Pdisk for OS 9 cannot even see any devices. Irritating to say the least.

What's up with not being able to write to my partition table? How do I change it? I really don't have a day to spare or desire to reformat my hard drive.

Thanks for your help.
Chris

[mervTormel]

you might need to run pdisk in single user mode. and you'd have to mount the root partition? maybe not. the man pages are skimpy.

and your partition config had oughta be OSX as the first partition and the others after it. i think you can then zero the other parts and then add them back to the root partition.

i'd practice pdisk in read-only mode and write down the steps. it's rather ornery.

[astromac]

No go with the single user mode - it still tells me the map is not writeable. Here's what it looks like for what it's worth.

Last login: Mon Dec 16 06:49:03 on ttyp1
Welcome to Jaguar! Macs rock!
[Chris-TiBook:~] christopherboerger% pdisk
Top level command (? for help): L
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk0' (Permission denied)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk1' (Invalid argument)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk2' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk3' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk4' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk5' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk6' (No such file or directory)
Top level command (? for help): e
Name of device: /dev/rdisk0
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk0' (Permission denied)
Top level command (? for help): q
The end
[Chris-TiBook:~] christopherboerger% sudo pdisk
Top level command (? for help): L
/dev/rdisk0 map block size=512
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 120
4: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 176
5: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 232
6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
7: Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
9: Apple_HFS OS 9 12582912 @ 1824 ( 6.0G)
10: Apple_HFS OS X 68780832 @ 12584736 ( 32.8G)
11: Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap 2048 @ 81365568 ( 1.0M)
12: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Linux Native 7168000 @ 81367616 ( 3.4G)
13: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 512000 @ 88535616 (250.0M)
14: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Linux Native 4711504 @ 89047616 ( 2.2G)

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=93759120
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 23, type=0x1
2: @ 120 for 36, type=0xffff
3: @ 176 for 21, type=0x701
4: @ 232 for 34, type=0xf8ff

pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk1' (Invalid argument)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk2' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk3' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk4' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk5' (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk6' (No such file or directory)
Top level command (? for help): e
Name of device: /dev/rdisk0
/dev/rdisk0
Command (? for help): d
The map is not writeable.
Partition number: q
Bad partition number
Command (? for help): q
Top level command (? for help): q
The end