On 11/9/2016 3:43 AM, [email protected] wrote: > I have to concur with Stefan on this. My use case is even more > stupid -- no "real" device, but just a disk image as a file. > > Fdisk "just works" on that, whereas gparted... see above. > > With all this VM rage of late, this kind of use cases are expected > to proliferate. It doesn't help security if random programs force > the user to become root for no reason.
The usefulness of a gparted on an image file without being root is near zero. You can add or remove a partition, but can not see what filesystems are currently in them, format a filesystem, check a filesystem, or move a partition. All of these things require a loopback device with dev nodes for each partition, and that requires root. If you are setting up a VM disk image, what good is it to be able to create the partition, but not format a filesystem inside it?
