libparted: add support for Linux software RAID arrays (mdraid)

[android-x86/external-parted.git] / NEWS

GNU parted NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-

* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]

** New features

  parted now recognizes ATA over Ethernet (AoE) devices

  parted now recognizes Linux Software RAID Arrays

** Bug fixes

  When libparted deferenced a /dev/mapper/foo symlink, it would keep the
  resulting /dev/dm-N name and sometimes use it later, even though it
  had since become stale and invalid.  It no longer stores the result
  of dereferencing a /dev/mapper symlink.

  libparted's msdos_partition_is_flag_available function now always reports
  that the "hidden" flag is not available for an extended partition.
  Similarly, msdos_partition_get_flag(p,PED_PARTITION_HIDDEN) always returns 0
  for an extended partition.

  libparted uses a more accurate heuristic to distinguish between
  ext4 and ext3 partitions.

** Changes in behavior

  libparted no longer issues an exception/warning about >512-byte
  sector support being "HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL".  It seems to have matured
  enough to be usable at least with GPT and MSDOS partition tables.


* Noteworthy changes in release 2.2 (2010-02-26) [stable]

** Changes in behavior

  The default alignment (--align option) for newly created partitions has
  been changed to optimal.

** New features

  The ped_device_get_*_alignment() functions now return a sane default
  value instead of NULL when the so called topology information is incomplete.
  The default minimum alignment aligns to physical sector size, the default
  optimal alignment is 1MiB, which is what vista and windows 7 do.

** Bug fixes

  Parted no longer uses a physical sector size of 0 or of any other
  value smaller than the logical sector size.

  dos: creating an HFS or HFS+ partition in an msdos partition table
  used to set the partition type to 0x83.  That is wrong.  The required
  number is 0xaf, and that is what is used now.

  gpt: read-only operation could clobber MBR part of hybrid GPT+MBR table
  [bug introduced in parted-2.1]

  gpt: a read-only operation like "parted $dev print" would overwrite $dev's
  protective MBR when exactly one of the primary and backup GPT tables was
  found to be corrupt.
  [bug introduced prior to parted-1.8.0]

  sun: the version, sanity and nparts VTOC fields were ignored by libparted.
  Those fields are properly initialized now. The nparts (number of partitions)
  field is initialized to 8 (max. number of sun partitions) rather that to a
  real number of partitions. This solution is compatible with Linux kernel
  and Linux fdisk.

  "make install" no longer installs tests programs named disk and label

  libparted: try harder to inform kernel of partition changes.
  Previously when editing partitions, occasionally the kernel would
  fail to be informed of partition changes.  When this happened future
  problems would occur because the kernel had incorrect information.
  For example, if this problem arose when resizing or creating a
  new partition, then an incorrect partition size might be displayed
  or a user might encounter a failure to format or delete a newly
  created partition, respectively.

  libparted: committing a disk that was returned by ped_disk_duplicate
  would always result in ped_disk_clobber being called (and thus the first
  and last 9KiB of the disk being zeroed), even if the duplicated disk,
  was not returned by ped_disk_fresh().


* Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]

** New features

  new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
  none:     Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
  cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
  minimal:  Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  optimal:  Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  The minimal and optimal  values will use layout information provided by the
  disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
  blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
  align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
  degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
  block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
  The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
  libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
  behave as the none --align value.

  libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
  ped_disk_set_flag()
  ped_disk_get_flag()
  ped_disk_is_flag_available()
  ped_disk_flag_get_name()
  ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
  ped_disk_flag_next()

  libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
  (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
  is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.

  libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
    - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
    start sector number for a given "disk".
    - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
    for a given "disk".

  new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
  of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk.  E.g.,
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
  information from devices:
  ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
  ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
  information about alignment enforced by the disk type.

** Bug fixes

  parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
  Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
  [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]

  improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
  4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
  when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".

  gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
  were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
  known-corrupt primary table.

  improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
  ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
  would fail.  This is fixed now.

  handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
  properly.

  when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names


* Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]

** Improvements

  Parted now supports disks with sector size larger than 512 bytes.
  Before this release, Parted could operate only on disks with a sector
  size of 512 bytes.  However, disk manufacturers are already making disks
  with an exposed hardware sector size of 4096 bytes.  Prior versions of
  Parted cannot even read a partition table on such a device, not to
  mention create or manipulate existing partition tables.
  Due to internal design and time constraints, the following
  less-common partition table types are currently disabled:
    amiga, bsd, aix, pc98
  "bsd" and "amiga" are mostly done, but had a few minor problems,
  so may remain disabled until someone requests that they be revived.

** Bug fixes

  big-endian systems can once again read GPT partition tables
  [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]

  ped_partition_is_busy no longer calls libparted's exception handler,
  since doing so caused trouble with anaconda/pyparted when operating on
  dmraid devices.

  Partitions in a GPT table are no longer assigned the "microsoft
  reserved partition" type.  Before this change, each partition would
  be listed with a type of "msftres" by default.


* Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.0 (2009-07-23) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  parted now preserves the protective MBR (PMBR) in GPT type labels.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
    002473.html
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2008-12/msg00015.html

  gpt_read now uses SizeOfPartitionEntry instead of the size of
  GuidPartitionEntry_t.  This ensures that *all* of the partition
  entries are correctly read.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
    002465.html
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/attachments/\
    20081202/b7c0528d/attachment.txt

  mklabel (interactive mode) now correctly asks for confirmation, when
  replacing an existent label, without outputting an error message.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-January/\
    002739.html

  resize now handles FAT16 file systems with a 64k cluster.  This
  configuration is not common, but it is possible.
  http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/207

  parted now ignores devices of the type /dev/md* when probing.  These
  types of devices should be handled by the device-mapper capabilities
  of parted.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
    002781.html

  The parted documentation now describes the differences in the options
  passed to mkpart for the label types.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
    002782.html

** Changes in behavior

  include/parted/beos.h, include/parted/gnu.h and include/parted/linux.h
  have been removed.  The symbols contained in these files (GNUSpecific,
  ped_device_new_from_store, BEOSSpecific, LinuxSpecific,  LINUX_SPECIFIC)
  were moved to the individual files that need them.

  In libparted, the linux-swap "filesystem" types are now called
  "linux-swap(v0)" and "linux-swap(v1)" rather than "linux-swap(old)"
  and "linux-swap(new)" as in parted 1.8, or "linux-swap" as in older
  versions; "old" and "new" generally make poor names, and v1 is the
  only format supported by current Linux kernels. Aliases for all
  previous names are available.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8.1 (2007-12-17) [stable]

** FIXME: fill in details

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.8 (2007-08-09) [stable]

** GNU parted is now licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3
   or higher.  See the COPYING file for more details.

** libparted:
  - Add compute_block_counts() to improve ext2fs support.
  - Properly detect 'ext2 fs too small' cases.
  - Move formatting commands out of translatable strings.
  - Read an msdos partition table from a device with 2K sectors.
  - Remove always-false "Unable to open" diagnostic in ped_disk_new(),
    leave the "unrecognized disk label" diagnostic.
  - Don't leak partition table buffer in amiga_read().
  - Don't read/write initialized memory with DEBUG turned on off for
    'mklabel bsd' and 'mklabel amiga' command calls.
  - Turn off DEBUG in libparted.c to avoid initializing all allocated
    memory to '1' bits.
  - Correct handling of HeaderSize field in GPT labels.
  - Fix block number used when checking for ext2 fs state.
  - Add detection support for Xen virtual block devices (/dev/xvd*).
  - When reading DASD labels, check the filesystem type as well as
    partition flags to determine what's on the partition.
  - Add _dm_probe_all() from Debian to probe for all device-mapper
    devices.

** parted:
  - Fixed exception handling in mkpart and mkpartfs commands.
  - Add the --dry-run option to the partprobe command.
  - Update docs: cannot specify 'primary' for a partition on a loop
    device.
  - Remove unused functions (get_spaces).
  - Fix off-by-one error in str_list_print_wrap().
  - Use xmalloc() and xrealloc() to check return values.
  - Fix invalid command line argument handling.
  - Close memory leaks in parted.c and table.c.
  - Fix warnings when compiling with translation support enabled.
  - Use a consistent prompt when asking for a file system type.
  - Update docs: don't reference old versions of gzip.

** misc:
  - Improve the testing framework in the tests/ subdirectory.  Build out
    more of the testing scripts so we can start using that to ensure we
    don't introduce regressions in releases.
  - Support testing with tmpfs filesystems on Linux.
  - Work around inadequate libreadline in the configure script.
  - Don't include config.h from internal headers.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.7 (2007-05-09) [stable]

** libparted:
  - Prevent compilation of DASD code on GNU Hurd systems.
  - Integrate new unit testing framework for parted and libparted.
  - Fix primary partition cylinder alignment error for DOS disk labels.
  - Use PED_PARTITION_NORMAL in place of PED_PARTITION_PRIMARY.
  - Avoid segfault due to a double free on reiserfs support.

** parted:
  - Fix script mode (-s) for mkfs command in parted.
  - Suppress "you are not superuser..." warning in script mode.
  - Fix off-by-one bug in parted when displaying information about the
    disk.
  - Do not translate partition names in the 'parted print' command.
    This causes problems for non-Latin-based character sets.
  - Send errors to stderr rather than stdout.
  - Handle command line options independent of the order.
  - Abort on any invalid option and handle -v and -h first.
  - Only display the update /etc/fstab message when there has been a
    change to the disk (a shorter and more direct message too).

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.6 (2007-03-20) [stable]

** Revert the implementation of the linux-swap(new) and linux-swap(old) types.
   The type is 'linux-swap' for v1, v2, and s1suspend swap partitions on Linux.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.5 (2007-03-20) [stable]

** Another minor update.  Both versions 1.8.3 and 1.8.4 lacked po translation
   files.  These are included with version 1.8.5.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.4 (2007-03-19) [stable]

** Minor bug fix release for 1.8.3 to fix build issues on various
   platforms:
  - Use 'uname -m' to determine if we build on System Z or not.
  - Include <parted/vtoc.h> in <parted/fdasd.h> for format1_label_t
    definition.
  - Remove unused variables in libparted/arch/linux.c (-Werror).
  - Check return values on fgets() and asprint() in libparted/arch/linux.c
    (-Werror).
  - Check for tgetent() in libtinfo in the configure script.
  - Move some macro definitions in <parted/disk.h> to fix a compile
    problem with gcc-4.1.2 as indicated here:
    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2007-03/msg00008.html

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.3 (2007-03-16) [stable]

** libparted:
  - Header file clean ups.
  - Sync the linux-swap header according to the Linux kernel sources.
  - Enable support for swsusp partitions and the ability to differentiate
    between old and new versions of linux-swap partitions.
  - Renaming PARTITION_EXT to PARTITION_DOS_EXT in the DOS disklabel
    code (consitency with Linux kernel source).
  - Added libparted.pc pkg-config file.
  - Remove unused functions, ifdefs, and other code.
  - Deprecate ped_[register|unregister]_disk_type in favor of
    ped_disk_type_[register|unregister].
  - Small test program fixes (in label.c and common.c).
  - Make functions const-correct.
  - Handle systems where libreadline is not available.
  - Preserve starting sector for primary NTFS 3.1 partitions on DOS
    disklabel.
  - Handle 2048-byte logical sectors in linux_read().
  - Use PED_SECTOR_SIZE_DEFAULT macro in place of 512.
  - Don't assume logical sector size is <= 512B on AIX.
  - Detect HFS write failure.
  - Use mkstemp() in place of mktemp().
  - Added HFS+ resize support.
  - Don't build DASD support on non-zSeries hardware.

** parted/partprobe:
  - Use fputs() and putchar() in place for printf(), when possible.
  - Detect/report stdout write errors.
  - Accept the --version and --help options.
  - Fix memory leaks in parted(8).

** general:
  - Synchronize the manual page and --help documentation.
  - GNU autoconf and automake updates.
  - 'gcc -Wall -Wshadow' warning cleanups.
  - Don't define _GNU_SOURCE manually.
  - Documentation updates and cleanups (AUTHORS, copyright notices,
    etc).
  - Use gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/).

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.2 (2007-01-12) [stable]

** libparted:
  - Add the ped_device_cache_remove() function to remove a device from
    the cache.  This is necessary for some things that use libparted,
    including pyparted.
  - Fix a segfault in ped_assert() where the wrong pointer is freed in
    the backtrace handler.
  - Only call _disk_warn_loss(disk) in do_mklabel() if disk is not NULL.
    Fixes a segfault when initializing new volumes.
  - Dynamically allocate space for exception messages.
  - Output a backtrace when catching SEGV_MAPPER or a general SIGSEGV.

** parted:
  - Destroy all objects before return when called with --list or --all
    option.
  - Zero sized device is shown as 0.00B and not -0.00kB.
  - Implement 'print devices' command.
  - Alias 'print list' to 'print all'.
  - Alias 'mktable' to 'mklabel'.

** misc:
  - Other bug fixes, documentation updates, and translation improvements.
  - Code and API clean-ups.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.1 (2006-12-04) [stable]

** libparted:
  - Rework backtrace support.
  - Code cleanups.
  - Added --enable-selinux configure option to enable linking libparted with
    libselinux and libsepol.
  - Disable ext2fs resize for now, tell user to use resize2fs.

** parted:
  - Fix loop in print_all().
  - Introduce the -list command-line switch.
  - Make mktable aliased to mklabel.
  - Warn before mklabel and mkfs.
  - Code cleanups in _partition_warn_busy(), _disk_warn_busy(),
    _partition_warn_loss(), and _disk_warn_loss().
  - Avoid warning about user permissions when using --version.
  - Fix 'print' command help.
  - Proper print when there are no extended partitions, but partition names.

** misc:
  - Generate SHA-1 digest of the archive files and upload those along with the
    actual archive files.
  - Update translation files.
  - Remove automatically generated files from version control.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.8.0 (2006-11-17) [stable]

** libparted:
  - GPT fixes:
       - Correctly handle disks with non-512 byte sector sizes
       - Support LUN resizing (see new space, allow parted to use it)
       - Prevent overlap of LastUsableLBA and PartitionEntryLBA in backup GPT
  - Prevent SIGFPE when FAT sector size is 0
  - Add ped_exception_get_handler()
  - DASD support for IBM zSeries systems
  - AIX disk label support
  - Detect Promise SX8 storage devices
  - Macintosh (ppc and x86) disk label improvements:
       - Prevent LVM and RAID partition types from corrupting the table
       - Fix removal of driver partition
  - Add support binary units (MiB, KiB, GiB)
  - In ped_register_disk_type(), handle disk_types==NULL case
  - In ped_unregister_disk_type(), handle case where type is not registered
  - Fix geometry read problems on 64-bit Macs (and probably other 64-bit systems)
  - Add support for /dev/mapper devices via libdevmapper library
  - Detect Apple_Boot partition types correctly on MacOS X 10.4 systems

** parted:
  - Various bug fixes, signal handling fixes, and spelling error fixes
  - UI improvements to display more information about the disk and transport
    layer

========================================================================

Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.