I am currently composing a comprehensive bug report on this including more information than you could ever possibly want. :) Many thanks for the feedback so far.
I'd really like to get this working--and have some time I could devote to the parted codebase if needed--since the alternative is either hacking fdisk itself or feeding values to it a la: <<EOF d 1 +20G EOF (which I haven't actually tried but am assuming works). At any rate, I'll have the more comprehensive report tomorrow first thing. Thanks again. :) On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 15:24 -0500, Jeremy Moles wrote: > I have a quick question about parted. I doubt its a bug in parted > itself; rather, it is more likely that I am simply using it > incorrectly. :) > > Okay, here goes: > > I use parted in a large bash script to automate a lot of tedious (and > difficult using any tool that doesn't let me tell it a partition size in > megabytes) partition manipulation. The process is as follows: > > 1. I receive a machine with a partition table containing Windows and a > special "Recovery Partition." > > 2. I shrink the windows partition using ntfsresize and then go in using > fdisk to recreate the partition layout. > > 3. At this point, the recovery partition still works no matter how I get > in to it (via the BIOS option or using a GRUB CD to boot into it). > > 4. Another step comes through later and uses parted to fill in the > remaining space with useful stuff; HOWEVER, for some reason, parted > changes the original disk geometry parameters. For example: the disk > originally had 240 heads, but after parted "touches" it, this gets > changed to a value like 16. > > 5. At this point, Windows (hda1) will boot just fine. The recovery > partition, (hda2), is no longer accessible using the BIOS's recovery > mechanism--which, for IBMs, is the "Access IBM" button. Additionally, > any attempt to "use" it results in the standard "Blue Screen of Death." > > Unfortunately, this is irreversible... no matter what I do, I cannot > recreate the partition (using the original geometry constraints) to make > the recovery work again. > > My question is: why is parted modifying these values? Is there an > invocation that says: "don't touch the number of heads, etc." As it > stands, parted seems to do what it wants to the geometry parameters > (though, I'm sure smarter people than me wrote parted and have a good > reason WHY they're doing it :) ), but it's seriously breaking the > recovery partition. > > Anyone have any ideas? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Bug-parted mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-parted _______________________________________________ Bug-parted mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-parted
