1 GNU parted NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 gpt: read-only operation could clobber MBR part of hybrid GPT+MBR table
8 [bug introduced in parted-2.1]
10 "make install" no longer installs tests programs named disk and label
13 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]
17 new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
18 none: Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
19 cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
20 minimal: Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
21 optimal: Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
22 The minimal and optimal values will use layout information provided by the
23 disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
24 blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
25 align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
26 degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
27 block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
28 The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
29 libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
30 behave as the none --align value.
32 libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
35 ped_disk_is_flag_available()
36 ped_disk_flag_get_name()
37 ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
40 libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
41 (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
42 is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.
44 libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
45 - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
46 start sector number for a given "disk".
47 - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
50 new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
51 of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk. E.g.,
52 parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
53 parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
54 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
56 Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
57 information from devices:
58 ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
59 ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
60 ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
61 ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
62 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
64 Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
65 information about alignment enforced by the disk type.
69 parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
70 Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
71 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
73 improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
74 4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
75 when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".
77 gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
78 were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
79 known-corrupt primary table.
81 improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
82 ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
83 would fail. This is fixed now.
85 handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
88 when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names
91 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
95 Parted now supports disks with sector size larger than 512 bytes.
96 Before this release, Parted could operate only on disks with a sector
97 size of 512 bytes. However, disk manufacturers are already making disks
98 with an exposed hardware sector size of 4096 bytes. Prior versions of
99 Parted cannot even read a partition table on such a device, not to
100 mention create or manipulate existing partition tables.
101 Due to internal design and time constraints, the following
102 less-common partition table types are currently disabled:
103 amiga, bsd, aix, pc98
104 "bsd" and "amiga" are mostly done, but had a few minor problems,
105 so may remain disabled until someone requests that they be revived.
109 big-endian systems can once again read GPT partition tables
110 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
112 ped_partition_is_busy no longer calls libparted's exception handler,
113 since doing so caused trouble with anaconda/pyparted when operating on
116 Partitions in a GPT table are no longer assigned the "microsoft
117 reserved partition" type. Before this change, each partition would
118 be listed with a type of "msftres" by default.
121 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.0 (2009-07-23) [stable]
125 parted now preserves the protective MBR (PMBR) in GPT type labels.
126 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
128 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2008-12/msg00015.html
130 gpt_read now uses SizeOfPartitionEntry instead of the size of
131 GuidPartitionEntry_t. This ensures that *all* of the partition
132 entries are correctly read.
133 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
135 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/attachments/\
136 20081202/b7c0528d/attachment.txt
138 mklabel (interactive mode) now correctly asks for confirmation, when
139 replacing an existent label, without outputting an error message.
140 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-January/\
143 resize now handles FAT16 file systems with a 64k cluster. This
144 configuration is not common, but it is possible.
145 http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/207
147 parted now ignores devices of the type /dev/md* when probing. These
148 types of devices should be handled by the device-mapper capabilities
150 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
153 The parted documentation now describes the differences in the options
154 passed to mkpart for the label types.
155 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
158 ** Changes in behavior
160 include/parted/beos.h, include/parted/gnu.h and include/parted/linux.h
161 have been removed. The symbols contained in these files (GNUSpecific,
162 ped_device_new_from_store, BEOSSpecific, LinuxSpecific, LINUX_SPECIFIC)
163 were moved to the individual files that need them.
165 In libparted, the linux-swap "filesystem" types are now called
166 "linux-swap(v0)" and "linux-swap(v1)" rather than "linux-swap(old)"
167 and "linux-swap(new)" as in parted 1.8, or "linux-swap" as in older
168 versions; "old" and "new" generally make poor names, and v1 is the
169 only format supported by current Linux kernels. Aliases for all
170 previous names are available.
172 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8.1 (2007-12-17) [stable]
174 ** FIXME: fill in details
176 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8 (2007-08-09) [stable]
178 ** GNU parted is now licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3
179 or higher. See the COPYING file for more details.
182 - Add compute_block_counts() to improve ext2fs support.
183 - Properly detect 'ext2 fs too small' cases.
184 - Move formatting commands out of translatable strings.
185 - Read an msdos partition table from a device with 2K sectors.
186 - Remove always-false "Unable to open" diagnostic in ped_disk_new(),
187 leave the "unrecognized disk label" diagnostic.
188 - Don't leak partition table buffer in amiga_read().
189 - Don't read/write initialized memory with DEBUG turned on off for
190 'mklabel bsd' and 'mklabel amiga' command calls.
191 - Turn off DEBUG in libparted.c to avoid initializing all allocated
193 - Correct handling of HeaderSize field in GPT labels.
194 - Fix block number used when checking for ext2 fs state.
195 - Add detection support for Xen virtual block devices (/dev/xvd*).
196 - When reading DASD labels, check the filesystem type as well as
197 partition flags to determine what's on the partition.
198 - Add _dm_probe_all() from Debian to probe for all device-mapper
202 - Fixed exception handling in mkpart and mkpartfs commands.
203 - Add the --dry-run option to the partprobe command.
204 - Update docs: cannot specify 'primary' for a partition on a loop
206 - Remove unused functions (get_spaces).
207 - Fix off-by-one error in str_list_print_wrap().
208 - Use xmalloc() and xrealloc() to check return values.
209 - Fix invalid command line argument handling.
210 - Close memory leaks in parted.c and table.c.
211 - Fix warnings when compiling with translation support enabled.
212 - Use a consistent prompt when asking for a file system type.
213 - Update docs: don't reference old versions of gzip.
216 - Improve the testing framework in the tests/ subdirectory. Build out
217 more of the testing scripts so we can start using that to ensure we
218 don't introduce regressions in releases.
219 - Support testing with tmpfs filesystems on Linux.
220 - Work around inadequate libreadline in the configure script.
221 - Don't include config.h from internal headers.
223 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.7 (2007-05-09) [stable]
226 - Prevent compilation of DASD code on GNU Hurd systems.
227 - Integrate new unit testing framework for parted and libparted.
228 - Fix primary partition cylinder alignment error for DOS disk labels.
229 - Use PED_PARTITION_NORMAL in place of PED_PARTITION_PRIMARY.
230 - Avoid segfault due to a double free on reiserfs support.
233 - Fix script mode (-s) for mkfs command in parted.
234 - Suppress "you are not superuser..." warning in script mode.
235 - Fix off-by-one bug in parted when displaying information about the
237 - Do not translate partition names in the 'parted print' command.
238 This causes problems for non-Latin-based character sets.
239 - Send errors to stderr rather than stdout.
240 - Handle command line options independent of the order.
241 - Abort on any invalid option and handle -v and -h first.
242 - Only display the update /etc/fstab message when there has been a
243 change to the disk (a shorter and more direct message too).
245 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.6 (2007-03-20) [stable]
247 ** Revert the implementation of the linux-swap(new) and linux-swap(old) types.
248 The type is 'linux-swap' for v1, v2, and s1suspend swap partitions on Linux.
250 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.5 (2007-03-20) [stable]
252 ** Another minor update. Both versions 1.8.3 and 1.8.4 lacked po translation
253 files. These are included with version 1.8.5.
255 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.4 (2007-03-19) [stable]
257 ** Minor bug fix release for 1.8.3 to fix build issues on various
259 - Use 'uname -m' to determine if we build on System Z or not.
260 - Include <parted/vtoc.h> in <parted/fdasd.h> for format1_label_t
262 - Remove unused variables in libparted/arch/linux.c (-Werror).
263 - Check return values on fgets() and asprint() in libparted/arch/linux.c
265 - Check for tgetent() in libtinfo in the configure script.
266 - Move some macro definitions in <parted/disk.h> to fix a compile
267 problem with gcc-4.1.2 as indicated here:
268 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2007-03/msg00008.html
270 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.3 (2007-03-16) [stable]
273 - Header file clean ups.
274 - Sync the linux-swap header according to the Linux kernel sources.
275 - Enable support for swsusp partitions and the ability to differentiate
276 between old and new versions of linux-swap partitions.
277 - Renaming PARTITION_EXT to PARTITION_DOS_EXT in the DOS disklabel
278 code (consitency with Linux kernel source).
279 - Added libparted.pc pkg-config file.
280 - Remove unused functions, ifdefs, and other code.
281 - Deprecate ped_[register|unregister]_disk_type in favor of
282 ped_disk_type_[register|unregister].
283 - Small test program fixes (in label.c and common.c).
284 - Make functions const-correct.
285 - Handle systems where libreadline is not available.
286 - Preserve starting sector for primary NTFS 3.1 partitions on DOS
288 - Handle 2048-byte logical sectors in linux_read().
289 - Use PED_SECTOR_SIZE_DEFAULT macro in place of 512.
290 - Don't assume logical sector size is <= 512B on AIX.
291 - Detect HFS write failure.
292 - Use mkstemp() in place of mktemp().
293 - Added HFS+ resize support.
294 - Don't build DASD support on non-zSeries hardware.
297 - Use fputs() and putchar() in place for printf(), when possible.
298 - Detect/report stdout write errors.
299 - Accept the --version and --help options.
300 - Fix memory leaks in parted(8).
303 - Synchronize the manual page and --help documentation.
304 - GNU autoconf and automake updates.
305 - 'gcc -Wall -Wshadow' warning cleanups.
306 - Don't define _GNU_SOURCE manually.
307 - Documentation updates and cleanups (AUTHORS, copyright notices,
309 - Use gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/).
311 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.2 (2007-01-12) [stable]
314 - Add the ped_device_cache_remove() function to remove a device from
315 the cache. This is necessary for some things that use libparted,
317 - Fix a segfault in ped_assert() where the wrong pointer is freed in
318 the backtrace handler.
319 - Only call _disk_warn_loss(disk) in do_mklabel() if disk is not NULL.
320 Fixes a segfault when initializing new volumes.
321 - Dynamically allocate space for exception messages.
322 - Output a backtrace when catching SEGV_MAPPER or a general SIGSEGV.
325 - Destroy all objects before return when called with --list or --all
327 - Zero sized device is shown as 0.00B and not -0.00kB.
328 - Implement 'print devices' command.
329 - Alias 'print list' to 'print all'.
330 - Alias 'mktable' to 'mklabel'.
333 - Other bug fixes, documentation updates, and translation improvements.
334 - Code and API clean-ups.
336 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.1 (2006-12-04) [stable]
339 - Rework backtrace support.
341 - Added --enable-selinux configure option to enable linking libparted with
342 libselinux and libsepol.
343 - Disable ext2fs resize for now, tell user to use resize2fs.
346 - Fix loop in print_all().
347 - Introduce the -list command-line switch.
348 - Make mktable aliased to mklabel.
349 - Warn before mklabel and mkfs.
350 - Code cleanups in _partition_warn_busy(), _disk_warn_busy(),
351 _partition_warn_loss(), and _disk_warn_loss().
352 - Avoid warning about user permissions when using --version.
353 - Fix 'print' command help.
354 - Proper print when there are no extended partitions, but partition names.
357 - Generate SHA-1 digest of the archive files and upload those along with the
358 actual archive files.
359 - Update translation files.
360 - Remove automatically generated files from version control.
362 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.0 (2006-11-17) [stable]
366 - Correctly handle disks with non-512 byte sector sizes
367 - Support LUN resizing (see new space, allow parted to use it)
368 - Prevent overlap of LastUsableLBA and PartitionEntryLBA in backup GPT
369 - Prevent SIGFPE when FAT sector size is 0
370 - Add ped_exception_get_handler()
371 - DASD support for IBM zSeries systems
372 - AIX disk label support
373 - Detect Promise SX8 storage devices
374 - Macintosh (ppc and x86) disk label improvements:
375 - Prevent LVM and RAID partition types from corrupting the table
376 - Fix removal of driver partition
377 - Add support binary units (MiB, KiB, GiB)
378 - In ped_register_disk_type(), handle disk_types==NULL case
379 - In ped_unregister_disk_type(), handle case where type is not registered
380 - Fix geometry read problems on 64-bit Macs (and probably other 64-bit systems)
381 - Add support for /dev/mapper devices via libdevmapper library
382 - Detect Apple_Boot partition types correctly on MacOS X 10.4 systems
385 - Various bug fixes, signal handling fixes, and spelling error fixes
386 - UI improvements to display more information about the disk and transport
389 ========================================================================
391 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
393 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
394 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
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397 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
398 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.