qsc Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Hi, I am trying to install Mac OS X onto my Toshiba laptop, using Kayway 10.5.2 DVD. At the beginning things look promising, but at the screen where it ask "where do you want to install Mac OS X", it gives no choices, and the "continue" botton is not active of course. Then I clicked Disk Utility. There I can see all my partitions. I click on the blank partition that I have prepared for this purpose, and try to "erase" it, but I did not succeed. At one point, when the partition is only a logic partition (concept from linux), it complains that "Mediakit report illogical request". After I changed the partition to a primary one, it stops complaining, but it never successfully formats it, because everytime I check, it would say "unrecognized file system". So at the end of the day, I still have no place to install Mac OS X. Here is some basic information of my system. It is a Toshiba Satellite A105 laptop, currently has Debian linux running on it, and I intend to dual boot with Mac OS X. The processor: Intel core duo (sse2 only, I believe) Graphics: Intel 945 Hard disk: Fujistu (I believe) IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02) If any more information is needed I can look it up and supply. Please help! Many thanks to all of you! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
muchlife Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 i've experienced problems with this, where disk utility has trouble partitioning, which i thought had something to do with the existing boot record from previously existing partitions. the only way i was able to get around this on a friend of mine's machine, was to format the entire drive, erasing every partition on that drive. only then would disk utility finish the formatting, and properly handle partitioning and filesystems. this sucked because we had an already existing windows install we wanted to keep. we said f* it and wiped it and reinstalled windows later. this shouldnt be that big of deal as you should always keep data/personal files on a seperate drive. if you want to do dual boot on the same drive with windows/linux and osx, i recommend osx (HFS journaled) being your top partition, and FAT being the bottom partition, which you change later to NTFS or linux filesystem when you installl windows/linux you have an existing linux partition on this disk, are you prepared to wipe it? if not then perhaps someone else has an idea to help Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1398205 Share on other sites More sharing options...
qsc Posted January 28, 2010 Author Share Posted January 28, 2010 Hi Muchlife, Thank you for the response. Yes I have linux on the machine, which itself span over several partitions. I do have data backed up on another drive, but it is still quite a lot of work to erase the whole system and then recover it. At this point I am reluctant to do so. I will wait to see if someone else can come up with a better idea. Thank you anyway for the input! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1398428 Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Chances are you just need to change the partition type code and put a suitable filesystem on the partition. I'd do one of two things: Change the partition type code to 0x0C and then create a FAT filesystem on the disk with the Linux mkdosfs or mkfs.msdos utility. Change the partition type code to 0xAF and then create an HFS+ filesystem on the disk with the Linux mkfs.hfsplus utility. This utility isn't installed on all systems, though; you may need to install it, probably from a package called hfsprogs or something similar. In either case, you can use the Linux fdisk program to change the partition type code. If you're not familiar with it, read its man page (type "man fdisk" at a shell prompt) for basic information. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1398537 Share on other sites More sharing options...
qsc Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 Chances are you just need to change the partition type code and put a suitable filesystem on the partition. I'd do one of two things: Change the partition type code to 0x0C and then create a FAT filesystem on the disk with the Linux mkdosfs or mkfs.msdos utility. Change the partition type code to 0xAF and then create an HFS+ filesystem on the disk with the Linux mkfs.hfsplus utility. This utility isn't installed on all systems, though; you may need to install it, probably from a package called hfsprogs or something similar. In either case, you can use the Linux fdisk program to change the partition type code. If you're not familiar with it, read its man page (type "man fdisk" at a shell prompt) for basic information. Hi, First, thank you for your response! I made faithful effort to follow your instructions, but did not succeed. I went through the man page of fdisk, but could not find out how to change partition type code. I even played with fdisk for while, and did not see where I can change partition type code. Actually, "partition type code" doesn't seem to be a prevalent concept. A google search did not return much relevant content. fdisk does have a option to list all known partition type, but neither 0x0c nor 0xAF is on it. I would appreciate it if you or someone else can provide the specific command form of it. I will also appreicate it if you can also give the command form for mkdosfs. I already have the utilities installed on my linux system. Thank you! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1398633 Share on other sites More sharing options...
muchlife Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 perhaps this may help http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1118828 ?? i was given this same suggestion when i ran into this problem, but after several hours spent trying to be sure what i was doing would work, i figured it would take less time to back up my data, erase, reinstall, restore data. good luck if you go the route of changing partition system code, and if you succeed, please post back as this info with good guides does not seem easily found on the interwebs Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1398642 Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 The Linux fdisk command to change a partition type code is 't', as in: $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00022117 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 64 38913 312062625 8e Linux LVM /dev/sdb3 13 63 409657+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition table entries are not in disk order Command (m for help): t Partition number (1-4): 3 Hex code (type L to list codes): af Changed system type of partition 3 to af (HFS / HFS+) Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00022117 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 64 38913 312062625 8e Linux LVM /dev/sdb3 13 63 409657+ af HFS / HFS+ Partition table entries are not in disk order Command (m for help): Note the change in the "System" column between the two partition listings. The 0xAF code is not recognized in some versions of Linux fdisk, but that's unimportant; you can still set it. The 0x0C type code is recognized in all recent versions, but the 'L' command omits the leading "0x" (that's just standard notation for a hexadecimal value). After changing the type code, use the 'w' command to write your changes. (I didn't show this because I didn't want to change my example disk.) As to mkdosfs, it's pretty simple: $ sudo mkdosfs /dev/sdb3 Change the partition type code as necessary. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1399214 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyrisPC Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 create your partition with parted magic I have the same problem. once you make a hfs+ partition then reformat it with mac disk utility. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1399253 Share on other sites More sharing options...
qsc Posted January 31, 2010 Author Share Posted January 31, 2010 With the help I got from this forum, I finally was able to install Mac OS X on my Toshiba Satellite A105 laptop, dual boot with Debian linux. I would like to report my experience here so that those who come later may find it helpful. First I followed the instructions given by srs5694. I was able to change the partition type of the blank partition on my system to 0c, and format it with mkdosfs. This being done, the partition was recognized and picked up by the Mac OS X installer ( I am using Kalyway's 10.5.2 DVD). However, the installation aborted in the middle of the process, saying that some files could not be installed on the volume. I tried a couple of times, and all failed. I even re-format the disk to FAT file system using the apple disk utility, and it's no use. Note that, the disk utility will not allow you to re-format the disk to hfs+ at this point. So then I tried to change the partition type to af within linux environment. Note that the type af is not recognized by fdisk under Debian. But as srs5694 pointed out, you can change it anyway, even though fdisk complains that it is a unknown type. This being done, I make a hfs+ on the partition using mkfs.hfsplus. Next, boot onto the installer DVD again. The partition is recognized again. To be safe, I re-formated the partition to hfs+ (Mac Extended), and started the installation process. It went through!! In above 45 minutes, the installation succeeded, and I restarted the computer as told. Then, there came an annoying issue, an issue with my laptop probably. My laptop screen was all black while it is booting. So there is no boot menu shown, and I have no idea whether it boots onto Debian or onto Mac OS X. After several minutes of waiting, I shut down the computer and started again. This time, the computer boots onto Debian. Mac OS X is nowhere to see!! After some searching, I learned something new. It's called GRUB. Following instructions found on the web, I tell grub to look for Mac OS X on (hd0,1). Then I restarted the computer. A grub menu was shown, and I scroll down to Mac OS X, hit enter. The grub loader immediately told me it is an unkown file system, and refused to boot. Returning to Debian, from a terminal window, I started up grub, and tried grub>root(hd0,1) Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x5 grub> root (hd0,2) Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xaf Seeing the partition type 0xaf, I know the correct location is (hd0,2), although I have no idea what it is. I appended the following lines in /boot/grub/menu.list title Mac OS X root (hd0,2) makeactive chainloader +1 After this being done, I restarted the computer, and chose Mac OS X from the boot menu. Voila, here comes the Mac OS X! Here are some other issues I encountered later: 1. Blue screen after boot. Fixed by following Kalyway's instructions on the release notes. 2. Ethernet not working. Still working on it. May seek help later. Thank those who helped, and thank you all for reading this! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/209427-no-place-to-install-and-couldnt-format-the-disk/#findComment-1400234 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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