Need help using Terminal to delete a partition

[MKEGuy]

Here is a little background -

 

I installed SL on my 10v and had it working perfectly. Did Time Machine backups along the way. I started tinkering with things like setting up the remote cd/dvd to help install new software and eventually found myself playing with installing the voodoopower kext to see if I could improve battery life further. When I installed it messed up my 10v and wouldn't allow it to boot. So I booted to my usb device that I used to install everything and then used my time machine backup to go back a couple days. In those couple days I had created a 2nd partition on my HD that I was going to use for Ubuntu Netbook Remix because I was curious to see how it worked. When I did the back up the 2nd partition no longer is recognized in Disk Utility. I had tried a verify disk and a repair disk but neither has allowed Disk Utility to see that 2nd partition. However if I put "diskutil list" in Terminal it shows the partition on my HD but and its listed as an EFI partition which is why I'm guessing it wont allow me to see it in Disk Utility.

 

How can I delete this partition so I can reclaim that space on my HD then do another partition to install Ubuntu on? I have tried googling like crazy to find what I am looking for but have come up empty handed.

 

Thank you!

 

Here is what "diskutil list" returns just in case it helps with command sentencing.

 

disk0s4 is what I need to delete.

 

 

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *160.0 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Mac Mini HD 139.7 GB disk0s2

3: Microsoft Basic Data 0 B disk0s3

4: EFI 20.0 GB disk0s4

[srs5694]

I believe it's possible to do this with diskutil or with a tool called gpt; however, I'm not very familiar with either of them and my OS X box is shut down at the moment so I can't check the documentation. You can try typing "man diskutil" or "man gpt" to try to find the relevant options to delete or change the type code on the partition.

 

Alternatively, you can download my GPT fdisk program, which will do the job. You can either use the 'd' option to delete the partition or use the 't' option to change its type code to something more sensible (say, AF00 if it had been used as an HFS+ partition in the past). Be sure to type 'w' to exit if you want to save the changes you make.

[MKEGuy]

I must be a bigger idiot then I thought. lol

 

When I installed GPT I could not find anything in applications or utilities so I assumed it must be run via Terminal. So I typed in "man gpt" to read what was available. That reading brought me to the "destroy" command which seemed like it was going to work. When I typed in "gpt destroy disk0s4" it tells me "gpt destroy: unable to open device 'disk0s4': Permission denied"

 

How do I get permission? lol And am I even going down the right track here?

[srs5694]

Use "sudo", as in "sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk0s4". Note also the "/dev/" part; I'm not sure if that will be added automatically.

[Krishna21]

I must be a bigger idiot then I thought. lol

 

When I installed GPT I could not find anything in applications or utilities so I assumed it must be run via Terminal. So I typed in "man gpt" to read what was available. That reading brought me to the "destroy" command which seemed like it was going to work. When I typed in "gpt destroy disk0s4" it tells me "gpt destroy: unable to open device 'disk0s4': Permission denied"

 

How do I get permission? lol And am I even going down the right track here?

 

 

Do you have a Windows 7 or Vista DVD?

 

You can boot off of it, and then go to CMD on it, use diskpart, list disk, select disk 0, list partition, (shows partition, get partition number, example 4), select partition 4, wipe (or clean, can't remember).

and ur done