Re: Critical Parted Question

[Gary Greene]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 5:26 pm, Jeremy Moles wrote:
> I am currently composing a comprehensive bug report on this including
> more information than you could ever possibly want. :) Many thanks for
> the feedback so far.
>
> I'd really like to get this working--and have some time I could devote
> to the parted codebase if needed--since the alternative is either
> hacking fdisk itself or feeding values to it a la:
>
> <<EOF
>
>
> d
> 1
>
> +20G
> EOF
>
> (which I haven't actually tried but am assuming works). At any rate,
> I'll have the more comprehensive report tomorrow first thing.
>
> Thanks again. :)
>
> On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 15:24 -0500, Jeremy Moles wrote:
> > I have a quick question about parted. I doubt its a bug in parted
> > itself; rather, it is more likely that I am simply using it
> > incorrectly. :)
> >
> > Okay, here goes:
> >
> > I use parted in a large bash script to automate a lot of tedious (and
> > difficult using any tool that doesn't let me tell it a partition size in
> > megabytes) partition manipulation. The process is as follows:
> >
> > 1. I receive a machine with a partition table containing Windows and a
> > special "Recovery Partition."
> >
> > 2. I shrink the windows partition using ntfsresize and then go in using
> > fdisk to recreate the partition layout.
> >
> > 3. At this point, the recovery partition still works no matter how I get
> > in to it (via the BIOS option or using a GRUB CD to boot into it).
> >
> > 4. Another step comes through later and uses parted to fill in the
> > remaining space with useful stuff; HOWEVER, for some reason, parted
> > changes the original disk geometry parameters. For example: the disk
> > originally had 240 heads, but after parted "touches" it, this gets
> > changed to a value like 16.
> >
> > 5. At this point, Windows (hda1) will boot just fine. The recovery
> > partition, (hda2), is no longer accessible using the BIOS's recovery
> > mechanism--which, for IBMs, is the "Access IBM" button. Additionally,
> > any attempt to "use" it results in the standard "Blue Screen of Death."
> >
> > Unfortunately, this is irreversible... no matter what I do, I cannot
> > recreate the partition (using the original geometry constraints) to make
> > the recovery work again.
> >
> > My question is: why is parted modifying these values? Is there an
> > invocation that says: "don't touch the number of heads, etc." As it
> > stands, parted seems to do what it wants to the geometry parameters
> > (though, I'm sure smarter people than me wrote parted and have a good
> > reason WHY they're doing it :) ), but it's seriously breaking the
> > recovery partition.
> >
> > Anyone have any ideas?
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bug-parted mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-parted
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bug-parted mailing list
> address@hidden
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Ummm, why can't you use sfdisk? It has a script-friendly structure....

-- 
Gary L. Greene, Jr.
Sent from uriel
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