Public bug reported:

I would like to propose the following patch for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS


https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/8175ed3d74adacc895657ded7546cb3c5deeabad


[Impact]

 * This patch allows to use sfdisk to remove boot flag from all MBR partitions.
At the moment you can only "move" boot flag to other partitions.


 * Derivatives of Ubuntu that use Calamares might be impacted by this. At the 
moment
KDE Partition Manager and KPMcore (which is used by Calamares installer) are 
working on migrating to Polkit, so that they won't need to run GUI as root. One 
of the steps was moving from libparted backend to sfdisk backend for 
partitioning operations, so kpmcore will require 2.32 or 2.31.1 with this patch 
to have full functionality.


[Test Case]

Assuming that your want to deactivate boot flag on /dev/sdb which has
MBR partition table:

sudo sfdisk --activate /dev/sdb -

Without this patch you should see an error message.

With the patch it will print:
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                   
The bootable flag on partition 1 is disabled now.                               
                                                                                
                                                  
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                  
The partition table has been altered.                                           
                                                                                
                                                  
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.                                     
                                                                                
                                                  
Syncing disks.


[Regression Potential]
.
 * Should be extremely low. The change only adds a couple of lines in one file
which parses arguments of "sfdisk --activate". Nothing would change unless you
run sfdisk --activate

 * This patch does not change any libraries in util-linux, no need to
worry about API/ABI stability.

 * GPT users are not affected at all.


[Other Info]
 * This patch is part of util-linux 2.32.

** Affects: util-linux (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1752876

Title:
  sfdisk: allow disabling boot flag on MBR partition table

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/+bug/1752876/+subscriptions

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to