Partitioning the internal HDD on the MacBook

The last time I tried to shrink the size of the OSX partition on the MacBook and add a lot of other partitions for my Linux OSes, I could have sworn Parted Magic (not sure which version) did everything all by itself.
This time, however, things didn't go quite so smoothly.
First I tried Partition Magic 1.8 and this didn't do anything.
So, next I switched to PM 2.1 and here at least I was able to shrink the size of the OSX partition and add a total of 8 new partitions (as ext3).
However, when I clicked apply to actually physically do all of this partitioning, I got an unspecifed error message. This happened on eash of several times I tried this.
Even when I just reduced the OSX partition and id nothing else, still got the unspecified error.
OK, so I go back to Boot Camp Assistant (OSX>Applications>Utilities) and reduced the OSX partition and this time it worked.
Note that Boot Camp thinks you want to install Windows (imagine!) but allows you to delay the install until later.
At this point I popped in the Partition Magic 2.1 disk again and this time, it was a piece of cake to create the 8 ext3 partitions I needed in the unallocated space I had created using Boot Camp assistant.
Next step is to install some Linux stuff. I'll get started on this tomorrow.