The author of the pdisk partitioning utility, eryk vershen, is maintaining it again. The LinuxPPC folks had asked him to make some fixes. The latest version 0.8a2 is available at his ftp site
<ftp://cfcl.com/pub/ev/> I found eryk after becoming frustrated with Apple's Drive Setup. pdisk is also compiled as a MacOS app, making it possible to do without Drive Setup during the Linux installation process. It still operates in a command-line fashion under MacOS, and still creates Linux partitions by default. The latest version is very clean. The debian mac-fdisk is actually based on pdisk version 0.4, there have been a lot of fixes and enhancements since January 1997. I think it would be valuable for the debian distribution to be updated to the current version. eryk says he doesn't have time to participate on the debian mailing lists, but invited us to pick the changes up. I asked about licensing, and he sent the current version: > Copyright 1997,1998 by Apple Computer, Inc. > All Rights Reserved > > Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and > its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, > provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and > that both the copyright notice and this permission notice appear in > supporting documentation. > > APPLE COMPUTER DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE > INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS > FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. > > IN NO EVENT SHALL APPLE COMPUTER BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT, OR > CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM > LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN ACTION OF CONTRACT, > NEGLIGENCE, OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION > WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. > > This is different (and less restrictive) from the license on the Darwin > version of pdisk, which was forked off of a much older version of pdisk. This license is identical to the license in the existing pdisk v0.4 source, within mac-fdisk, except the copyright year was 1996,1997. So I don't think that should be any problem. I would also strongly suggest the inclusion of the MacOS binary in the powermac folder alongside BootVars and BootX. Actually, I think it makes sense to add a subdirectory 'MacOSUtilities' inside powermac, with some specific documentation of its own included, which I'm volunteering to write. eryk also said > If someone has specific questions about pdisk, feel free to send them my way. > > -eryk vershen > software mechanic > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
