Re: Parted 1.6.0-pre9

[Richard Hirst]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:20:19PM +1000, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Anything more to do?

Tried it on ia64:

> address@hidden:/build/parted/parted-1.6.0-pre9$ sudo parted/parted /dev/sdc
> GNU Parted 1.6.0-pre9
> EXPERIMENTAL RELEASE - DO NOT USE ON VALUABLE DATA!!!
> 
> Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.
> 
> This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT 
> ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
> MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General 
> Public License for more details.
> 
> Using /dev/sdc
> (parted) mklabel gpt
> (parted) p
> Disk geometry for /dev/sdc: 0.000-4095.856 megabytes
> Disk label type: gpt
> Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
> (parted) mkpartfs primary ext2 0 100
> (parted) p
> Disk geometry for /dev/sdc: 0.000-4095.856 megabytes
> Disk label type: gpt
> Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
> 1          0.017    100.000  ext2                              hp-service
> (parted) 

Oops!  I wanted hp-service support, but didn't want it by default on
every new partition ;-)

gpt_partition_new() is missing a "gpt_part_data->hp_service = 0;".
Seems to me it might make more sense to zero the whole gpt_part_data
when creating a new partition.


Also, I didn't see a response to my request to use double rather than
long double in command_line_get_sector() to work round a gcc/glibc bug
on hppa.  You might take the view that we should fix gcc/glibc, and I
couldn't argue with that, but I think double is more than enough in
this case.


I see there is also progress feedback in 1.6, which is nice, but in
this case:

> (parted) mkpartfs primary ext2 200 300
> writing per-group metadata... 100%      (time left 00:12)(parted)         

it failed to erase the progress line.  Actually, progress reporting is
pretty eratic on this dual processor ia64 box, with 2G memory.  When
mkpartfs ext2'ing a 3G partition I seem to get one of:

a) no progress report at all
b) as above, percent count climbs up to 100% but (non-zero) time left
remains unchanged, then the prompt is appended to the line
c) as (b), but the time is initially displayed as 0:00, and doesn't
change, but the line is erased correctly on completion

If I get a progress indication, it hits 100% long before the prompt
returns, but I guess that is because of disk flushing.

I guess this is very hard to get right for short operations.  My
mkpartfs takes about 7 seconds, but by the sound of the disk, and the
100% indication, I think parted is only running for about 1 second, and
the rest is disk flushing.  Maybe the progress line could be replaced
with "writing changes to disk" once it hits 100%.

Progress looks to report nicely on checking a swap partition, which runs
for rather longer.


Next, I tried to create a partition over the top of an existing one:

> (parted) mkpartfs primary ext2 600 700
> (parted) mkpartfs primary ext2 600 700                                    
> Error: Attempt to read sectors 4294967294-4294967295 outside of partition on 
> /dev/sdc
> Ignore/Cancel? 


Under 1.4, trying to "set N swap on" with a gpt label would report
that the flag was not supported for GPT, but 1.6 just silently ignores
me.  Is that intentional?


Finally, I see that with a GPT label I can only create a partition up
to 8MB from the end of the disk, but with msdos, I can get to within
1MB:

> (parted) mklabel gpt
> (parted) mkpart primary ext2 0 -0
> (parted) p
> Disk geometry for /dev/sdc: 0.000-4095.856 megabytes
> Disk label type: gpt
> Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
> 1          0.017   4087.855  linux-swap                        hp-service
> (parted) mklabel msdos
> (parted) mkpart primary ext2 0 -0
> (parted) p
> Disk geometry for /dev/sdc: 0.000-4095.856 megabytes
> Disk label type: msdos
> Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
> 1          0.031   4094.692  primary               
> (parted) 

I don't know whether this is due to constraints or rounding errors, but
it struck me as odd.


Cheers,
  Richard