resizeVolume reporting 'No Space Left on device (28)'. What's up?

I don't have Intel Mac so I'm just guessing...

I guess 87G is not enough for the data on your volume. Try

$ sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 limits

This will tell you at least how much disk space is necessary for your data.

PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Hmm....

Did you try running diskutil in single user mode?

(Boot your mac while pressing cmd-S)

PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi again eeboarder,
I thought that we already went through this on the thread, diskutil resizeVolume error. What gives?
--
Gary
~~~~
If you play the Window NT install backwards
you get a Satanic message. That's nothing ...
if you play it forward, it install Windows NT!

eeboarder,

I would separate the tasks if you haven't already (shrinking existing and then adding new partitions).

First just shrink your current volume to 80G and report if that works...

It looks like you have a GUID Partition table (GPT) which is one pre-req. Can you check or post the results of diskutil info disk0s1 and ensure you are Journaled HFS+ as your current scheme (if the diskutil resize docs are correct...) There is some great info in the deveopler site - but you may not need to learn all of it to get this working...


<pre>mac:~ me$ diskutil resizeVolume
Disk Utility Tool
Usage: diskutil resizeVolume [Mount Point|Disk Identifier|Device Node] size
<part1Format part1Name part1Size> <part2Format part2Name part2Size> ...
Non-destructively resize a disk. You may increase or decrease its size.
When decreasing size, you may optionally supply a list of new partitions to create.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Valid partition sizes are in the format of <number><size>.
Valid sizes are B(ytes), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes)
Example: 10G (10 gigabytes), 4.23T (4.23 terabytes), 5M (5 megabytes)
resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem.
A size of "limits" will print the range of valid values for the current filesystem.
Example: diskutil resizeVolume disk1s3 10G
JHFS+ HDX1 5G MS-DOS HDX2 5G
Valid filesystems: "Case-sensitive HFS+" "Journaled HFS+" "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+"
"HFS+" "HFS" "MS-DOS FAT32" "MS-DOS FAT16"
"MS-DOS" "MS-DOS FAT12" "UFS" "Linux" "Swap"
</pre>

Does gpt show ... provide anything else helpful? (and I'll assume you have a JHFS+ that is being shrunk - diskutil info will tell you that...)

The only other thing to check is whether fsck runs cleanly now on that disk. Have you tried starting up from a DVD/CD and running fsck? (You mentioned earlier that there were underlying failures and I presume fsck was eventually called to clean that up)

(also - now might be a good time to get a backup of your drive in case there are problems with the MBR or Partition Table Header/Entry Array structures)

I jump right in and /sbin/fsck -fy while in single user mode but I also have a pretty decent backup scheme and can recover my data after a clean reformat/install if needed. You could try a live verify with diskutil verify /

I would recommend this article for a more complete set of steps...

gpt show did not show anything at all

That's strange. I believe all the Intel Macs use EFI/GPT,
and the output of 'diskutil list' in your first post
indicates your disk is indeed a GPT disk.
Did you try the following?

$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0


But I guess the output may be not so helpfull...

PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Yes - you can open disk utility when you boot from DVD (or other install media) and erase/format/partition your drive any way you like.

Erase/install might be the fastest way forward... (especially if you can back up your important files or don't care to re-do whatever settings you have)

To partition your startup disk:
*Insert the Mac OS X Install disc and restart the computer.
*When you hear the startup tone, hold down the C key until you see the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
*When the Installer appears, choose Utilities > Disk Utility.
*Select your disk from the list, and click Partition.
*Select how you want to partition the disk and any options you want, then click the Partition button at the bottom of the window.
*Quit Disk Utility.
When the Installer opens again, you can install Mac OS X on one of the partitions.

I think shrinking an active system volume may fail
if an immovable file (active system file?) occupies a
disk block which should be freed.
You may have slightly higher chance of success
if you run diskutil in the single user mode.
If that fails, then re-formating the entire disk may be
the only solution (you can try de-fragmentation tools but...).

The ability to partition a disk in such a way that WindowsXP can be installed into it (i.e., maintain MBR/GPT dual partition tables, etc.) is new in diskutil for OSX 10.4.6 (it is introduced for Boot Camp). I'm not sure whether the "Disk Utility.app" (and diskutil called from it) on your DVD is newer than 10.4.6 or not. It seems you have a brand-new Core2Duo MacBook Pro, so the DVD is quite new and the "Disk Utility" (and diskutil) in it may be able to partition in a Windows-compatible way, but I'm not sure.

So you may follow the following steps:

(1)Backup your data.
(2)Boot from the Tiger install DVD which came with your MacBook Pro.
(3)Do not re-install Tiger yet. Instead, select "Terminal" in the "Utility" menu. Then in the Terminal window, type the following

# diskutil help (or diskutil resizeVolume)

to see whether diskutil on the DVD is capable of resizeVolume. If it is, then

# diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 87G HFS+ Media 30G "MS-DOS FAT32" WinXP 30G

(At this stage, do not format the 2nd partition in FAT32).

If resizeVolume succeeds, then install WinXP and re-format "Media" as FAT32.

If diskutil on the DVD can't resizeVolume, or resizeVolume still gives "no space left" error, then

(4)Re-install Tiger without partitioning the disk (use the disk as a single volume).
(5)Update to OSX 10.4.8 (if it is older).
(6)resizeVolume as above (you will not get "no space left" error, I hope.).
(7)Install WindowsXP, reformat "Media" into FAT32. Restore your data.

At step (4), you may create three partitions by using "Disk Utility" on the DVD. But I'm not sure the disk partitioned in this way is compatible with Windows or not. It may work, but I think it would be safer to use 'diskutil resizeVolume'.

When you resizeVolume, it would be safer not to format the 2nd partition in FAT32. If both 2nd and 3rd partitions are FAT32, then Windows installer would assume that the 2nd partition is the C: drive. Many people are reporting that this causes troubles (related with boot.ini). After successfully installing WindowsXP, you can re-format the 2nd partition into FAT32 (by using “Disk Utility.app”, for example).

PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)