Gparted help

[Michael and Nicole Freeman]

Hi there!

I have an old 350MHz G3 iMac which I decided to run dual-OS with MacOS
9 and Linux. I got it all set up and running well, except that I
underestimated the amount of disk space I would need for the Linux
system. I have the basic 7Gb drive that came with the computer split
evenly between the two OS's, but I have lots of space left on the MacOS
HFS+ partition, but I'm just about out of it on the Linux Ext3 partition.

Here's the problem: I tried to use gparted with hfsutils to reduce the
size of the HFS+ partition with the hope of increasing the size of the
Ext3 partition. The shrinking part worked. I got a bunch of unallocated
space out of it, but then found that I gparted wouldn't allow me to add
it to the Ext3 partition because it's the one the active OS is running
on. Since I couldn't find a MacOS 9 way to do non-destructive partition
editing, I decided to try making it a FAT32 partition, which I had hoped
both could read, and I could use it to store documents, music, and
images accessible to both OS's. Gparted successfully assigned the
unallocated space as FAT32, but neither OS can mount it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm fairly new to Linux, so go easy
on me! :) I would prefer to have the space given to my Linux partition,
if possible, because I intend to eventually get rid of MacOS 9
altogether. The only thing I can't yet do with Linux (beside viewing
Flash files well - not a huge deal, but would be nice) is read all my
important AppleWorks .cwk files (no, OpenOffice can't read them, as I've
seen someone suggest). It'll take me some time transferring them over to
OpenOffice in a usable format.

I don't know if any of this is possible. I was under the impression it
was. Please let me know! Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Mike Freeman
mike [at] freeman-studio [dot] com

[I R A Darth Aggie]

On Sun, 20 May 2007 14:09:54 -0700,

+ images accessible to both OS's. Gparted successfully assigned the
+ unallocated space as FAT32, but neither OS can mount it.

Of course not. There's no filesystem on the partition.

+ Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm fairly new to Linux, so go easy
+ on me! :) I would prefer to have the space given to my Linux partition,
+ if possible, because I intend to eventually get rid of MacOS 9
+ altogether.

Hmmmm...well, you need to boot to linux, and lay down a
filesystem. You can do this from the command line, as root:

mkdosfs -F 32 -n 'some name' /dev/{disk}{part#}

You can skip the "-n 'some name'" part, if you don't need to give the
partition a name.

Please be absolutely sure what the proper /dev/{disk}{part#} (example:
/dev/hda5, /dev/sdb2, and so on) is. If you do a "mkdosfs" (or any of
the other format commands in the mkfs family) on the wrong partition,
you *will* wipe out all data on that partition.

+ The only thing I can't yet do with Linux (beside viewing
+ Flash files well - not a huge deal, but would be nice) is read all my
+ important AppleWorks .cwk files (no, OpenOffice can't read them, as I've
+ seen someone suggest). It'll take me some time transferring them over to
+ OpenOffice in a usable format.

This might be of use to you:

http://applecommander.sourceforge.net/

[B'ichela]

Post by Michael and Nicole Freeman
Hi there!
I have an old 350MHz G3 iMac which I decided to run dual-OS with MacOS
9 and Linux. I got it all set up and running well, except that I
underestimated the amount of disk space I would need for the Linux
system. I have the basic 7Gb drive that came with the computer split
evenly between the two OS's, but I have lots of space left on the MacOS
HFS+ partition, but I'm just about out of it on the Linux Ext3 partition.

Sounds like my Imac. Here is how I did it. and to do this.
BACK it up FIRST! ALL of it! you will need your system Install CDs as
well.
After you backed up BOTH OSs.
1. boot your Mac OS system CD
go to Drive setup
make a small HFS+ partition. say 1GB (unless you need more)
leave the rest of the Disk unallocated
Initalize this disk
2. Now restore your backups (you did make those Right?)

Now for the Linux side.
Go to your install CDs and install your Operating system. and Yaboot.
you can now begin to restore your Linux backups after this point.
Leave the files in /etc alone unless you carefully put them back in
one by one to make sure you don't create a nightmare. Possibly
/etc/fstab and yaboot.conf would be two you may want to NOT restore
without needed changes.

Of course if you got the green. Get a bigger HD and put it in. or go
with a external firewire drive. I did the former and it took me awhile
to get my Imac G3/350 open to put it in, Might was well change the PRAM
battery too while you are inside. a standard Duracell CR2 1/2 AA fits
fine and works good. It is a snug fitting battery and won't work
loose. It has more mAH than the original and given its application
will probally run your clock/pram for quite a longer time than 10 years!

Oh btw if you go with firewire.... I don't know if you need to look
for Oxford 911 chipset based firewire bridgeboards or not. but even
so you can always boot a external drive by holding down the option key
when you hear the "bong" hold it down until you see a graphics boot
menu. it will scan all Firewire/usb/IDE/Network boot drives. Mine has
the latest firmware and I also boot a USB thumbdrive as well with Mac
Os 9.2.2 on it! (its my Rescue stick, it aint a CD and it aint a disk
so a rescue stick it is.)

The firewire drives can also have a USB 2.0 interface as well so they
will boot even on the Usb 1.1 port of the Imac. Slow though, but its a
godsend if you need to sneakernet between PCs and Macs.

[tortoise]

Post by B'ichela

Post by Michael and Nicole Freeman
I have an old 350MHz G3 iMac which I decided to run dual-OS with MacOS
9 and Linux. I got it all set up and running well, except that I
underestimated the amount of disk space I would need for the Linux
system. I have the basic 7Gb drive that came with the computer split
evenly between the two OS's, but I have lots of space left on the MacOS
HFS+ partition, but I'm just about out of it on the Linux Ext3 partition.

Sounds like my Imac. Here is how I did it. and to do this.

I like parted better. Only trouble is macos may not recognize that a
macos partition
has changed size exactly. so i don't resize mac partions. i guess i
have learned the
hard way and now i keep extra partions on the disk and plenty of free
space and
backup too.

once upon a time DataViz could translate batches of Apple/Claris works
files into
other formats. I used to use it for jpeg conversions coming off my
camera too (pict or
tiff easier to edit and less dangerous ). can't do it with 0S9 though
but if you have
an extra partition for rescue of macos then i use macos8 (if machine
supports it) and
i can still use DataViz.

Although I am sure appleworks is scriptable so not a big deal to
automate with applescript.

so what about those abi word and open office formats ? well my
struggles these days
around htmlX,Xhtml,sgml,XML, ... ugh. mozilla is cool but sometimes i
like a simple pager
that works.

Post by B'ichela
BACK it up FIRST! ALL of it! you will need your system Install CDs as
well.
After you backed up BOTH OSs.
1. boot your Mac OS system CD
go to Drive setup
make a small HFS+ partition. say 1GB (unless you need more)
leave the rest of the Disk unallocated
Initalize this disk
2. Now restore your backups (you did make those Right?)
Now for the Linux side.
Go to your install CDs and install your Operating system. and Yaboot.
you can now begin to restore your Linux backups after this point.
Leave the files in /etc alone unless you carefully put them back in
one by one to make sure you don't create a nightmare. Possibly
/etc/fstab and yaboot.conf would be two you may want to NOT restore
without needed changes.
Of course if you got the green. Get a bigger HD and put it in. or go
with a external firewire drive. I did the former and it took me awhile
to get my Imac G3/350 open to put it in, Might was well change the PRAM
battery too while you are inside. a standard Duracell CR2 1/2 AA fits
fine and works good. It is a snug fitting battery and won't work
loose. It has more mAH than the original and given its application
will probally run your clock/pram for quite a longer time than 10 years!
Oh btw if you go with firewire.... I don't know if you need to look
for Oxford 911 chipset based firewire bridgeboards or not. but even
so you can always boot a external drive by holding down the option key
when you hear the "bong" hold it down until you see a graphics boot
menu. it will scan all Firewire/usb/IDE/Network boot drives. Mine has
the latest firmware and I also boot a USB thumbdrive as well with Mac
Os 9.2.2 on it! (its my Rescue stick, it aint a CD and it aint a disk
so a rescue stick it is.)
The firewire drives can also have a USB 2.0 interface as well so they
will boot even on the Usb 1.1 port of the Imac. Slow though, but its a
godsend if you need to sneakernet between PCs and Macs.
--
Planet Maca's Opus, a Free open BBS system. telnet://pinkrose.dhis.org
Web Site:http://pinkrose.dhis.org, Dialup 860-618-3091 300-33600 bps
The New Cnews maintainer
B'ichela

[tortoise]

oh, i forgot my favorite tool.

that is pdisk for macos8-9. it came from mklinux but the newest
version is of netbsd.

if you have an Empty macos partition you can delete it
and create for instance one linux partition and one macos.
when you reboot macos will ask you to initialize the mac
partion. you have to mkfs of the linux partition in linux.

then you can move as you will /home, /usr/local, whatever to
your new linux partition.

the dos partition sounds like a bright idea. except for me
its no good as I boycott all things microsoft.