1 GNU parted NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.3 (2010-05-28) [stable]
10 parted now recognizes ATA over Ethernet (AoE) devices
12 parted now recognizes Linux Software RAID Arrays
14 libparted has a new partition flag to check for diagnostic (aka recovery
15 or reserved) partitions: PED_PARTITION_DIAG
19 When libparted deferenced a /dev/mapper/foo symlink, it would keep the
20 resulting /dev/dm-N name and sometimes use it later, even though it
21 had since become stale and invalid. It no longer stores the result
22 of dereferencing a /dev/mapper symlink.
24 libparted's msdos_partition_is_flag_available function now always reports
25 that the "hidden" flag is not available for an extended partition.
26 Similarly, msdos_partition_get_flag(p,PED_PARTITION_HIDDEN) always returns 0
27 for an extended partition.
29 libparted uses a more accurate heuristic to distinguish between
30 ext4 and ext3 partitions.
32 libparted now properly checks the return value of dm_task_run when
33 operating on devicemapper devices.
35 allow using ped_device_cache_remove(dev) followed by a (later)
36 ped_device_destroy() without corrupting the device cache.
38 when creating an ext2 file system[*], Parted no longer creates an
39 invalid one when its size is 2TiB or larger.
40 [*] Remember, now all FS-creation operations are deprecated in Parted.
41 This is not an indicator that we'll be supporting this code.
42 On the contrary, it is slated to be removed.
44 ** Changes in behavior
46 libparted no longer issues an exception/warning about >512-byte
47 sector support being "HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL". It seems to have matured
48 enough to be usable at least with GPT and MSDOS partition tables.
51 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.2 (2010-02-26) [stable]
53 ** Changes in behavior
55 The default alignment (--align option) for newly created partitions has
56 been changed to optimal.
60 The ped_device_get_*_alignment() functions now return a sane default
61 value instead of NULL when the so called topology information is incomplete.
62 The default minimum alignment aligns to physical sector size, the default
63 optimal alignment is 1MiB, which is what vista and windows 7 do.
67 Parted no longer uses a physical sector size of 0 or of any other
68 value smaller than the logical sector size.
70 dos: creating an HFS or HFS+ partition in an msdos partition table
71 used to set the partition type to 0x83. That is wrong. The required
72 number is 0xaf, and that is what is used now.
74 gpt: read-only operation could clobber MBR part of hybrid GPT+MBR table
75 [bug introduced in parted-2.1]
77 gpt: a read-only operation like "parted $dev print" would overwrite $dev's
78 protective MBR when exactly one of the primary and backup GPT tables was
80 [bug introduced prior to parted-1.8.0]
82 sun: the version, sanity and nparts VTOC fields were ignored by libparted.
83 Those fields are properly initialized now. The nparts (number of partitions)
84 field is initialized to 8 (max. number of sun partitions) rather that to a
85 real number of partitions. This solution is compatible with Linux kernel
88 "make install" no longer installs tests programs named disk and label
90 libparted: try harder to inform kernel of partition changes.
91 Previously when editing partitions, occasionally the kernel would
92 fail to be informed of partition changes. When this happened future
93 problems would occur because the kernel had incorrect information.
94 For example, if this problem arose when resizing or creating a
95 new partition, then an incorrect partition size might be displayed
96 or a user might encounter a failure to format or delete a newly
97 created partition, respectively.
99 libparted: committing a disk that was returned by ped_disk_duplicate
100 would always result in ped_disk_clobber being called (and thus the first
101 and last 9KiB of the disk being zeroed), even if the duplicated disk,
102 was not returned by ped_disk_fresh().
105 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]
109 new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
110 none: Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
111 cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
112 minimal: Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
113 optimal: Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
114 The minimal and optimal values will use layout information provided by the
115 disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
116 blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
117 align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
118 degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
119 block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
120 The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
121 libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
122 behave as the none --align value.
124 libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
127 ped_disk_is_flag_available()
128 ped_disk_flag_get_name()
129 ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
132 libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
133 (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
134 is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.
136 libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
137 - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
138 start sector number for a given "disk".
139 - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
142 new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
143 of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk. E.g.,
144 parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
145 parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
146 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
148 Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
149 information from devices:
150 ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
151 ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
152 ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
153 ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
154 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
156 Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
157 information about alignment enforced by the disk type.
161 parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
162 Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
163 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
165 improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
166 4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
167 when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".
169 gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
170 were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
171 known-corrupt primary table.
173 improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
174 ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
175 would fail. This is fixed now.
177 handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
180 when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names
183 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
187 Parted now supports disks with sector size larger than 512 bytes.
188 Before this release, Parted could operate only on disks with a sector
189 size of 512 bytes. However, disk manufacturers are already making disks
190 with an exposed hardware sector size of 4096 bytes. Prior versions of
191 Parted cannot even read a partition table on such a device, not to
192 mention create or manipulate existing partition tables.
193 Due to internal design and time constraints, the following
194 less-common partition table types are currently disabled:
195 amiga, bsd, aix, pc98
196 "bsd" and "amiga" are mostly done, but had a few minor problems,
197 so may remain disabled until someone requests that they be revived.
201 big-endian systems can once again read GPT partition tables
202 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
204 ped_partition_is_busy no longer calls libparted's exception handler,
205 since doing so caused trouble with anaconda/pyparted when operating on
208 Partitions in a GPT table are no longer assigned the "microsoft
209 reserved partition" type. Before this change, each partition would
210 be listed with a type of "msftres" by default.
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.0 (2009-07-23) [stable]
217 parted now preserves the protective MBR (PMBR) in GPT type labels.
218 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
220 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2008-12/msg00015.html
222 gpt_read now uses SizeOfPartitionEntry instead of the size of
223 GuidPartitionEntry_t. This ensures that *all* of the partition
224 entries are correctly read.
225 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
227 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/attachments/\
228 20081202/b7c0528d/attachment.txt
230 mklabel (interactive mode) now correctly asks for confirmation, when
231 replacing an existent label, without outputting an error message.
232 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-January/\
235 resize now handles FAT16 file systems with a 64k cluster. This
236 configuration is not common, but it is possible.
237 http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/207
239 parted now ignores devices of the type /dev/md* when probing. These
240 types of devices should be handled by the device-mapper capabilities
242 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
245 The parted documentation now describes the differences in the options
246 passed to mkpart for the label types.
247 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
250 ** Changes in behavior
252 include/parted/beos.h, include/parted/gnu.h and include/parted/linux.h
253 have been removed. The symbols contained in these files (GNUSpecific,
254 ped_device_new_from_store, BEOSSpecific, LinuxSpecific, LINUX_SPECIFIC)
255 were moved to the individual files that need them.
257 In libparted, the linux-swap "filesystem" types are now called
258 "linux-swap(v0)" and "linux-swap(v1)" rather than "linux-swap(old)"
259 and "linux-swap(new)" as in parted 1.8, or "linux-swap" as in older
260 versions; "old" and "new" generally make poor names, and v1 is the
261 only format supported by current Linux kernels. Aliases for all
262 previous names are available.
264 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8.1 (2007-12-17) [stable]
266 ** FIXME: fill in details
268 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8 (2007-08-09) [stable]
270 ** GNU parted is now licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3
271 or higher. See the COPYING file for more details.
274 - Add compute_block_counts() to improve ext2fs support.
275 - Properly detect 'ext2 fs too small' cases.
276 - Move formatting commands out of translatable strings.
277 - Read an msdos partition table from a device with 2K sectors.
278 - Remove always-false "Unable to open" diagnostic in ped_disk_new(),
279 leave the "unrecognized disk label" diagnostic.
280 - Don't leak partition table buffer in amiga_read().
281 - Don't read/write initialized memory with DEBUG turned on off for
282 'mklabel bsd' and 'mklabel amiga' command calls.
283 - Turn off DEBUG in libparted.c to avoid initializing all allocated
285 - Correct handling of HeaderSize field in GPT labels.
286 - Fix block number used when checking for ext2 fs state.
287 - Add detection support for Xen virtual block devices (/dev/xvd*).
288 - When reading DASD labels, check the filesystem type as well as
289 partition flags to determine what's on the partition.
290 - Add _dm_probe_all() from Debian to probe for all device-mapper
294 - Fixed exception handling in mkpart and mkpartfs commands.
295 - Add the --dry-run option to the partprobe command.
296 - Update docs: cannot specify 'primary' for a partition on a loop
298 - Remove unused functions (get_spaces).
299 - Fix off-by-one error in str_list_print_wrap().
300 - Use xmalloc() and xrealloc() to check return values.
301 - Fix invalid command line argument handling.
302 - Close memory leaks in parted.c and table.c.
303 - Fix warnings when compiling with translation support enabled.
304 - Use a consistent prompt when asking for a file system type.
305 - Update docs: don't reference old versions of gzip.
308 - Improve the testing framework in the tests/ subdirectory. Build out
309 more of the testing scripts so we can start using that to ensure we
310 don't introduce regressions in releases.
311 - Support testing with tmpfs filesystems on Linux.
312 - Work around inadequate libreadline in the configure script.
313 - Don't include config.h from internal headers.
315 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.7 (2007-05-09) [stable]
318 - Prevent compilation of DASD code on GNU Hurd systems.
319 - Integrate new unit testing framework for parted and libparted.
320 - Fix primary partition cylinder alignment error for DOS disk labels.
321 - Use PED_PARTITION_NORMAL in place of PED_PARTITION_PRIMARY.
322 - Avoid segfault due to a double free on reiserfs support.
325 - Fix script mode (-s) for mkfs command in parted.
326 - Suppress "you are not superuser..." warning in script mode.
327 - Fix off-by-one bug in parted when displaying information about the
329 - Do not translate partition names in the 'parted print' command.
330 This causes problems for non-Latin-based character sets.
331 - Send errors to stderr rather than stdout.
332 - Handle command line options independent of the order.
333 - Abort on any invalid option and handle -v and -h first.
334 - Only display the update /etc/fstab message when there has been a
335 change to the disk (a shorter and more direct message too).
337 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.6 (2007-03-20) [stable]
339 ** Revert the implementation of the linux-swap(new) and linux-swap(old) types.
340 The type is 'linux-swap' for v1, v2, and s1suspend swap partitions on Linux.
342 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.5 (2007-03-20) [stable]
344 ** Another minor update. Both versions 1.8.3 and 1.8.4 lacked po translation
345 files. These are included with version 1.8.5.
347 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.4 (2007-03-19) [stable]
349 ** Minor bug fix release for 1.8.3 to fix build issues on various
351 - Use 'uname -m' to determine if we build on System Z or not.
352 - Include <parted/vtoc.h> in <parted/fdasd.h> for format1_label_t
354 - Remove unused variables in libparted/arch/linux.c (-Werror).
355 - Check return values on fgets() and asprint() in libparted/arch/linux.c
357 - Check for tgetent() in libtinfo in the configure script.
358 - Move some macro definitions in <parted/disk.h> to fix a compile
359 problem with gcc-4.1.2 as indicated here:
360 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2007-03/msg00008.html
362 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.3 (2007-03-16) [stable]
365 - Header file clean ups.
366 - Sync the linux-swap header according to the Linux kernel sources.
367 - Enable support for swsusp partitions and the ability to differentiate
368 between old and new versions of linux-swap partitions.
369 - Renaming PARTITION_EXT to PARTITION_DOS_EXT in the DOS disklabel
370 code (consitency with Linux kernel source).
371 - Added libparted.pc pkg-config file.
372 - Remove unused functions, ifdefs, and other code.
373 - Deprecate ped_[register|unregister]_disk_type in favor of
374 ped_disk_type_[register|unregister].
375 - Small test program fixes (in label.c and common.c).
376 - Make functions const-correct.
377 - Handle systems where libreadline is not available.
378 - Preserve starting sector for primary NTFS 3.1 partitions on DOS
380 - Handle 2048-byte logical sectors in linux_read().
381 - Use PED_SECTOR_SIZE_DEFAULT macro in place of 512.
382 - Don't assume logical sector size is <= 512B on AIX.
383 - Detect HFS write failure.
384 - Use mkstemp() in place of mktemp().
385 - Added HFS+ resize support.
386 - Don't build DASD support on non-zSeries hardware.
389 - Use fputs() and putchar() in place for printf(), when possible.
390 - Detect/report stdout write errors.
391 - Accept the --version and --help options.
392 - Fix memory leaks in parted(8).
395 - Synchronize the manual page and --help documentation.
396 - GNU autoconf and automake updates.
397 - 'gcc -Wall -Wshadow' warning cleanups.
398 - Don't define _GNU_SOURCE manually.
399 - Documentation updates and cleanups (AUTHORS, copyright notices,
401 - Use gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/).
403 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.2 (2007-01-12) [stable]
406 - Add the ped_device_cache_remove() function to remove a device from
407 the cache. This is necessary for some things that use libparted,
409 - Fix a segfault in ped_assert() where the wrong pointer is freed in
410 the backtrace handler.
411 - Only call _disk_warn_loss(disk) in do_mklabel() if disk is not NULL.
412 Fixes a segfault when initializing new volumes.
413 - Dynamically allocate space for exception messages.
414 - Output a backtrace when catching SEGV_MAPPER or a general SIGSEGV.
417 - Destroy all objects before return when called with --list or --all
419 - Zero sized device is shown as 0.00B and not -0.00kB.
420 - Implement 'print devices' command.
421 - Alias 'print list' to 'print all'.
422 - Alias 'mktable' to 'mklabel'.
425 - Other bug fixes, documentation updates, and translation improvements.
426 - Code and API clean-ups.
428 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.1 (2006-12-04) [stable]
431 - Rework backtrace support.
433 - Added --enable-selinux configure option to enable linking libparted with
434 libselinux and libsepol.
435 - Disable ext2fs resize for now, tell user to use resize2fs.
438 - Fix loop in print_all().
439 - Introduce the -list command-line switch.
440 - Make mktable aliased to mklabel.
441 - Warn before mklabel and mkfs.
442 - Code cleanups in _partition_warn_busy(), _disk_warn_busy(),
443 _partition_warn_loss(), and _disk_warn_loss().
444 - Avoid warning about user permissions when using --version.
445 - Fix 'print' command help.
446 - Proper print when there are no extended partitions, but partition names.
449 - Generate SHA-1 digest of the archive files and upload those along with the
450 actual archive files.
451 - Update translation files.
452 - Remove automatically generated files from version control.
454 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.0 (2006-11-17) [stable]
458 - Correctly handle disks with non-512 byte sector sizes
459 - Support LUN resizing (see new space, allow parted to use it)
460 - Prevent overlap of LastUsableLBA and PartitionEntryLBA in backup GPT
461 - Prevent SIGFPE when FAT sector size is 0
462 - Add ped_exception_get_handler()
463 - DASD support for IBM zSeries systems
464 - AIX disk label support
465 - Detect Promise SX8 storage devices
466 - Macintosh (ppc and x86) disk label improvements:
467 - Prevent LVM and RAID partition types from corrupting the table
468 - Fix removal of driver partition
469 - Add support binary units (MiB, KiB, GiB)
470 - In ped_register_disk_type(), handle disk_types==NULL case
471 - In ped_unregister_disk_type(), handle case where type is not registered
472 - Fix geometry read problems on 64-bit Macs (and probably other 64-bit systems)
473 - Add support for /dev/mapper devices via libdevmapper library
474 - Detect Apple_Boot partition types correctly on MacOS X 10.4 systems
477 - Various bug fixes, signal handling fixes, and spelling error fixes
478 - UI improvements to display more information about the disk and transport
481 ========================================================================
483 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
485 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
486 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
487 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
488 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
489 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
490 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.