[iLikebeer]

Hi, I have an old rev. A iMac that I decided to install linux on. I d/l'ed the .iso's of YDL 3.0.1 and burned them to cd. I started the install and ran into a snag trying to use 1 of my partitions.

I have 3 partitions:
Macintosh HD is 4.8 GB and used for MacOS 8.6 system (HFS)
MacHD2 is 14.6 GB and has no data (HFS+)
MacHD3 is 9 GB and has apps and files (HFS+)
I doesn't matter to me whether I put linux on the 2nd or 3rd partition, but I would really rather not have to completely reformat and reinstall if possible.

Is there some program that can change one of the partitions to free space or a linux partition? Would pdisk do this?
I tried using drive setup, but couldn't get to the custom initialization menu to change a partition; do I need to startup from the 8.5 install cd to do that?

Thanks, any help would be very much appreciated.

[gbhgbh]

I haven't installed Linux in a while but, the installation process should allow you to delete one of the partitions, then reformat it for Linux. Alternatively, you can use a utility like pdisk or Disk Utility to delete the partition to free-up disk space before installing. However I would use the Linux installer to format the space rather than use OS X.

[ginoledesma]

You can use pdisk, but always make sure you have a backup of your system!

[lenox]

um....put it on the 14.6gb disk that has no data on it!

if that itself is just a partition, delete it (and only it) and then create your swap and linux root partition inside of that 14.6gb free space.

the other partitions with data on them will not even be touched