partitioning help

[xyrmi]

I want to partition my internal HD to install linux. I'm currently running OS X 10.4. According to this and this I have to use that diskutil command to partition and avoid wiping out my hd. However when I tried it terminal responded with this: Resizing encountered error The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972) on disk disk0s2 Macintosh HD.
I was reading some threads here and for the most part I found nothing that could help me except apart from maybe I should have defragmented my drive. Given terminal's output, can I deduce that partitioning didn't occur and my drive isn't damaged (I mean I doubt given that I'm on my laptop right now and disk utility isn't showing me anything weird. But I want to be extra careful considering I know squat about using terminal) as a result of this attempt?

 

[jackhdev]

Why would you use Terminal when you can use Disk Utility? Select the main hard drive and partition it. Do they not have that in 10.4, not sure since my first Mac was running 10.5.

 

[xyrmi]

Why would you use Terminal when you can use Disk Utility? Select the main hard drive and partition it. Do they not have that in 10.4, not sure since my first Mac was running 10.5.

The first link tells me that to make partitions on Tiger using Disk Utility I'd have to erase the current partitions on my HD. I have the important things backed up but I'd rather not have to reinstall my OS (I mean I have the install disk but it's 10.4.8...does Apple still have the subsequent updates available for dl?).