1 GNU parted NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 libparted once again recognizes a whole-disk FAT partition
8 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
10 libparted now recognizes scsi disks with a high major (128-135) as scsi
13 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.3 (2010-05-28) [stable]
17 parted now recognizes ATA over Ethernet (AoE) devices
19 parted now recognizes Linux Software RAID Arrays
21 libparted has a new partition flag to check for diagnostic (aka recovery
22 or reserved) partitions: PED_PARTITION_DIAG
26 When libparted deferenced a /dev/mapper/foo symlink, it would keep the
27 resulting /dev/dm-N name and sometimes use it later, even though it
28 had since become stale and invalid. It no longer stores the result
29 of dereferencing a /dev/mapper symlink.
31 libparted's msdos_partition_is_flag_available function now always reports
32 that the "hidden" flag is not available for an extended partition.
33 Similarly, msdos_partition_get_flag(p,PED_PARTITION_HIDDEN) always returns 0
34 for an extended partition.
36 libparted uses a more accurate heuristic to distinguish between
37 ext4 and ext3 partitions.
39 libparted now properly checks the return value of dm_task_run when
40 operating on devicemapper devices.
42 allow using ped_device_cache_remove(dev) followed by a (later)
43 ped_device_destroy() without corrupting the device cache.
45 when creating an ext2 file system[*], Parted no longer creates an
46 invalid one when its size is 2TiB or larger.
47 [*] Remember, now all FS-creation operations are deprecated in Parted.
48 This is not an indicator that we'll be supporting this code.
49 On the contrary, it is slated to be removed.
51 ** Changes in behavior
53 libparted no longer issues an exception/warning about >512-byte
54 sector support being "HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL". It seems to have matured
55 enough to be usable at least with GPT and MSDOS partition tables.
58 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.2 (2010-02-26) [stable]
60 ** Changes in behavior
62 The default alignment (--align option) for newly created partitions has
63 been changed to optimal.
67 The ped_device_get_*_alignment() functions now return a sane default
68 value instead of NULL when the so called topology information is incomplete.
69 The default minimum alignment aligns to physical sector size, the default
70 optimal alignment is 1MiB, which is what vista and windows 7 do.
74 Parted no longer uses a physical sector size of 0 or of any other
75 value smaller than the logical sector size.
77 dos: creating an HFS or HFS+ partition in an msdos partition table
78 used to set the partition type to 0x83. That is wrong. The required
79 number is 0xaf, and that is what is used now.
81 gpt: read-only operation could clobber MBR part of hybrid GPT+MBR table
82 [bug introduced in parted-2.1]
84 gpt: a read-only operation like "parted $dev print" would overwrite $dev's
85 protective MBR when exactly one of the primary and backup GPT tables was
87 [bug introduced prior to parted-1.8.0]
89 sun: the version, sanity and nparts VTOC fields were ignored by libparted.
90 Those fields are properly initialized now. The nparts (number of partitions)
91 field is initialized to 8 (max. number of sun partitions) rather that to a
92 real number of partitions. This solution is compatible with Linux kernel
95 "make install" no longer installs tests programs named disk and label
97 libparted: try harder to inform kernel of partition changes.
98 Previously when editing partitions, occasionally the kernel would
99 fail to be informed of partition changes. When this happened future
100 problems would occur because the kernel had incorrect information.
101 For example, if this problem arose when resizing or creating a
102 new partition, then an incorrect partition size might be displayed
103 or a user might encounter a failure to format or delete a newly
104 created partition, respectively.
106 libparted: committing a disk that was returned by ped_disk_duplicate
107 would always result in ped_disk_clobber being called (and thus the first
108 and last 9KiB of the disk being zeroed), even if the duplicated disk,
109 was not returned by ped_disk_fresh().
112 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]
116 new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
117 none: Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
118 cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
119 minimal: Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
120 optimal: Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
121 The minimal and optimal values will use layout information provided by the
122 disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
123 blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
124 align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
125 degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
126 block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
127 The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
128 libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
129 behave as the none --align value.
131 libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
134 ped_disk_is_flag_available()
135 ped_disk_flag_get_name()
136 ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
139 libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
140 (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
141 is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.
143 libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
144 - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
145 start sector number for a given "disk".
146 - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
149 new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
150 of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk. E.g.,
151 parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
152 parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
153 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
155 Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
156 information from devices:
157 ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
158 ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
159 ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
160 ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
161 The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align
163 Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
164 information about alignment enforced by the disk type.
168 parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
169 Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
170 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
172 improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
173 4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
174 when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".
176 gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
177 were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
178 known-corrupt primary table.
180 improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
181 ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
182 would fail. This is fixed now.
184 handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
187 when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names
190 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
194 Parted now supports disks with sector size larger than 512 bytes.
195 Before this release, Parted could operate only on disks with a sector
196 size of 512 bytes. However, disk manufacturers are already making disks
197 with an exposed hardware sector size of 4096 bytes. Prior versions of
198 Parted cannot even read a partition table on such a device, not to
199 mention create or manipulate existing partition tables.
200 Due to internal design and time constraints, the following
201 less-common partition table types are currently disabled:
202 amiga, bsd, aix, pc98
203 "bsd" and "amiga" are mostly done, but had a few minor problems,
204 so may remain disabled until someone requests that they be revived.
208 big-endian systems can once again read GPT partition tables
209 [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]
211 ped_partition_is_busy no longer calls libparted's exception handler,
212 since doing so caused trouble with anaconda/pyparted when operating on
215 Partitions in a GPT table are no longer assigned the "microsoft
216 reserved partition" type. Before this change, each partition would
217 be listed with a type of "msftres" by default.
220 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.0 (2009-07-23) [stable]
224 parted now preserves the protective MBR (PMBR) in GPT type labels.
225 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
227 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2008-12/msg00015.html
229 gpt_read now uses SizeOfPartitionEntry instead of the size of
230 GuidPartitionEntry_t. This ensures that *all* of the partition
231 entries are correctly read.
232 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
234 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/attachments/\
235 20081202/b7c0528d/attachment.txt
237 mklabel (interactive mode) now correctly asks for confirmation, when
238 replacing an existent label, without outputting an error message.
239 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-January/\
242 resize now handles FAT16 file systems with a 64k cluster. This
243 configuration is not common, but it is possible.
244 http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/207
246 parted now ignores devices of the type /dev/md* when probing. These
247 types of devices should be handled by the device-mapper capabilities
249 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
252 The parted documentation now describes the differences in the options
253 passed to mkpart for the label types.
254 http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
257 ** Changes in behavior
259 include/parted/beos.h, include/parted/gnu.h and include/parted/linux.h
260 have been removed. The symbols contained in these files (GNUSpecific,
261 ped_device_new_from_store, BEOSSpecific, LinuxSpecific, LINUX_SPECIFIC)
262 were moved to the individual files that need them.
264 In libparted, the linux-swap "filesystem" types are now called
265 "linux-swap(v0)" and "linux-swap(v1)" rather than "linux-swap(old)"
266 and "linux-swap(new)" as in parted 1.8, or "linux-swap" as in older
267 versions; "old" and "new" generally make poor names, and v1 is the
268 only format supported by current Linux kernels. Aliases for all
269 previous names are available.
271 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8.1 (2007-12-17) [stable]
273 ** FIXME: fill in details
275 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8 (2007-08-09) [stable]
277 ** GNU parted is now licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3
278 or higher. See the COPYING file for more details.
281 - Add compute_block_counts() to improve ext2fs support.
282 - Properly detect 'ext2 fs too small' cases.
283 - Move formatting commands out of translatable strings.
284 - Read an msdos partition table from a device with 2K sectors.
285 - Remove always-false "Unable to open" diagnostic in ped_disk_new(),
286 leave the "unrecognized disk label" diagnostic.
287 - Don't leak partition table buffer in amiga_read().
288 - Don't read/write initialized memory with DEBUG turned on off for
289 'mklabel bsd' and 'mklabel amiga' command calls.
290 - Turn off DEBUG in libparted.c to avoid initializing all allocated
292 - Correct handling of HeaderSize field in GPT labels.
293 - Fix block number used when checking for ext2 fs state.
294 - Add detection support for Xen virtual block devices (/dev/xvd*).
295 - When reading DASD labels, check the filesystem type as well as
296 partition flags to determine what's on the partition.
297 - Add _dm_probe_all() from Debian to probe for all device-mapper
301 - Fixed exception handling in mkpart and mkpartfs commands.
302 - Add the --dry-run option to the partprobe command.
303 - Update docs: cannot specify 'primary' for a partition on a loop
305 - Remove unused functions (get_spaces).
306 - Fix off-by-one error in str_list_print_wrap().
307 - Use xmalloc() and xrealloc() to check return values.
308 - Fix invalid command line argument handling.
309 - Close memory leaks in parted.c and table.c.
310 - Fix warnings when compiling with translation support enabled.
311 - Use a consistent prompt when asking for a file system type.
312 - Update docs: don't reference old versions of gzip.
315 - Improve the testing framework in the tests/ subdirectory. Build out
316 more of the testing scripts so we can start using that to ensure we
317 don't introduce regressions in releases.
318 - Support testing with tmpfs filesystems on Linux.
319 - Work around inadequate libreadline in the configure script.
320 - Don't include config.h from internal headers.
322 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.7 (2007-05-09) [stable]
325 - Prevent compilation of DASD code on GNU Hurd systems.
326 - Integrate new unit testing framework for parted and libparted.
327 - Fix primary partition cylinder alignment error for DOS disk labels.
328 - Use PED_PARTITION_NORMAL in place of PED_PARTITION_PRIMARY.
329 - Avoid segfault due to a double free on reiserfs support.
332 - Fix script mode (-s) for mkfs command in parted.
333 - Suppress "you are not superuser..." warning in script mode.
334 - Fix off-by-one bug in parted when displaying information about the
336 - Do not translate partition names in the 'parted print' command.
337 This causes problems for non-Latin-based character sets.
338 - Send errors to stderr rather than stdout.
339 - Handle command line options independent of the order.
340 - Abort on any invalid option and handle -v and -h first.
341 - Only display the update /etc/fstab message when there has been a
342 change to the disk (a shorter and more direct message too).
344 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.6 (2007-03-20) [stable]
346 ** Revert the implementation of the linux-swap(new) and linux-swap(old) types.
347 The type is 'linux-swap' for v1, v2, and s1suspend swap partitions on Linux.
349 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.5 (2007-03-20) [stable]
351 ** Another minor update. Both versions 1.8.3 and 1.8.4 lacked po translation
352 files. These are included with version 1.8.5.
354 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.4 (2007-03-19) [stable]
356 ** Minor bug fix release for 1.8.3 to fix build issues on various
358 - Use 'uname -m' to determine if we build on System Z or not.
359 - Include <parted/vtoc.h> in <parted/fdasd.h> for format1_label_t
361 - Remove unused variables in libparted/arch/linux.c (-Werror).
362 - Check return values on fgets() and asprint() in libparted/arch/linux.c
364 - Check for tgetent() in libtinfo in the configure script.
365 - Move some macro definitions in <parted/disk.h> to fix a compile
366 problem with gcc-4.1.2 as indicated here:
367 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2007-03/msg00008.html
369 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.3 (2007-03-16) [stable]
372 - Header file clean ups.
373 - Sync the linux-swap header according to the Linux kernel sources.
374 - Enable support for swsusp partitions and the ability to differentiate
375 between old and new versions of linux-swap partitions.
376 - Renaming PARTITION_EXT to PARTITION_DOS_EXT in the DOS disklabel
377 code (consitency with Linux kernel source).
378 - Added libparted.pc pkg-config file.
379 - Remove unused functions, ifdefs, and other code.
380 - Deprecate ped_[register|unregister]_disk_type in favor of
381 ped_disk_type_[register|unregister].
382 - Small test program fixes (in label.c and common.c).
383 - Make functions const-correct.
384 - Handle systems where libreadline is not available.
385 - Preserve starting sector for primary NTFS 3.1 partitions on DOS
387 - Handle 2048-byte logical sectors in linux_read().
388 - Use PED_SECTOR_SIZE_DEFAULT macro in place of 512.
389 - Don't assume logical sector size is <= 512B on AIX.
390 - Detect HFS write failure.
391 - Use mkstemp() in place of mktemp().
392 - Added HFS+ resize support.
393 - Don't build DASD support on non-zSeries hardware.
396 - Use fputs() and putchar() in place for printf(), when possible.
397 - Detect/report stdout write errors.
398 - Accept the --version and --help options.
399 - Fix memory leaks in parted(8).
402 - Synchronize the manual page and --help documentation.
403 - GNU autoconf and automake updates.
404 - 'gcc -Wall -Wshadow' warning cleanups.
405 - Don't define _GNU_SOURCE manually.
406 - Documentation updates and cleanups (AUTHORS, copyright notices,
408 - Use gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/).
410 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.2 (2007-01-12) [stable]
413 - Add the ped_device_cache_remove() function to remove a device from
414 the cache. This is necessary for some things that use libparted,
416 - Fix a segfault in ped_assert() where the wrong pointer is freed in
417 the backtrace handler.
418 - Only call _disk_warn_loss(disk) in do_mklabel() if disk is not NULL.
419 Fixes a segfault when initializing new volumes.
420 - Dynamically allocate space for exception messages.
421 - Output a backtrace when catching SEGV_MAPPER or a general SIGSEGV.
424 - Destroy all objects before return when called with --list or --all
426 - Zero sized device is shown as 0.00B and not -0.00kB.
427 - Implement 'print devices' command.
428 - Alias 'print list' to 'print all'.
429 - Alias 'mktable' to 'mklabel'.
432 - Other bug fixes, documentation updates, and translation improvements.
433 - Code and API clean-ups.
435 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.1 (2006-12-04) [stable]
438 - Rework backtrace support.
440 - Added --enable-selinux configure option to enable linking libparted with
441 libselinux and libsepol.
442 - Disable ext2fs resize for now, tell user to use resize2fs.
445 - Fix loop in print_all().
446 - Introduce the -list command-line switch.
447 - Make mktable aliased to mklabel.
448 - Warn before mklabel and mkfs.
449 - Code cleanups in _partition_warn_busy(), _disk_warn_busy(),
450 _partition_warn_loss(), and _disk_warn_loss().
451 - Avoid warning about user permissions when using --version.
452 - Fix 'print' command help.
453 - Proper print when there are no extended partitions, but partition names.
456 - Generate SHA-1 digest of the archive files and upload those along with the
457 actual archive files.
458 - Update translation files.
459 - Remove automatically generated files from version control.
461 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.0 (2006-11-17) [stable]
465 - Correctly handle disks with non-512 byte sector sizes
466 - Support LUN resizing (see new space, allow parted to use it)
467 - Prevent overlap of LastUsableLBA and PartitionEntryLBA in backup GPT
468 - Prevent SIGFPE when FAT sector size is 0
469 - Add ped_exception_get_handler()
470 - DASD support for IBM zSeries systems
471 - AIX disk label support
472 - Detect Promise SX8 storage devices
473 - Macintosh (ppc and x86) disk label improvements:
474 - Prevent LVM and RAID partition types from corrupting the table
475 - Fix removal of driver partition
476 - Add support binary units (MiB, KiB, GiB)
477 - In ped_register_disk_type(), handle disk_types==NULL case
478 - In ped_unregister_disk_type(), handle case where type is not registered
479 - Fix geometry read problems on 64-bit Macs (and probably other 64-bit systems)
480 - Add support for /dev/mapper devices via libdevmapper library
481 - Detect Apple_Boot partition types correctly on MacOS X 10.4 systems
484 - Various bug fixes, signal handling fixes, and spelling error fixes
485 - UI improvements to display more information about the disk and transport
488 ========================================================================
490 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
492 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
493 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
494 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
495 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
496 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
497 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.