GNU Parted

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Table of contents

Introduction

GNU Parted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising disk usage, copying data on hard disks and disk imaging.

It contains a library, libparted, and a command-line frontend, parted, which also serves as a sample implementation and script backend.

Features

General features:

Operating system support:

GNU Parted currently compiles and runs on GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd and FreeBSD. BeOS support is very close.

Disk label (partition table) support:

File system support:

Supported operations
File system detect create resize copy check
ext2 * * *1 *2 *3
ext3 * *1 *2 *3
FAT16 * * *4 *4 *
FAT32 * * * * *
linux-swap * * * * *
HFS / HFS+ * *1,5
JFS *
NTFS *
ReiserFS * *6 *1,6 *6 *3,6
UFS *
XFS *

Notes:

  1. The start of the partition must stay fixed.
  2. The partition you copy to must be bigger or exactly the same size as the partition you copy from.
  3. Limited checking is done when the file system is opened. This is the only checking at the moment. All commands (including resize) will gracefully fail, leaving the file system intact, if there are any errors.
  4. You can always shrink your partition. If you can't use FAT32 for some reason, you may not be able to grow your partition due to restrictions in cluster size.
  5. Parted can only shrink HFS and HFS+ filesystems.
  6. ReiserFS support is enabled if you install libreiserfs, available at http://www.namesys.com

Downloading

The latest version of GNU Parted is: 1.6.25.1 (released 2005-11-09). Here is the corresponding ChangeLog.

All releases of GNU Parted can be found on http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/ or one of the mirrors.

Alternatively, GNU Parted is included in many GNU/Linux distributions. Moreover, Parted is often available in "rescue mode" that can be accessed by booting from the installation CDs. Note that GNU/Linux distributors frequently apply patches that are not included with the official GNU Parted versions published here.

Repository Access

The address of the Subversion repository is

svn://svn.debian.org/svn/parted/upstream

The repository is in fact located on the Alioth project server, which is part of the Debian GNU/Linux project, and can be accessed from the project page at http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/parted/.

Documentation

GNU Parted's manual is currently being reviewed (with parts being moved to the GNU Storage Guide), and API documentation is being converted to inline format. Until then, the old user's manual can be accessed in English and Japanese.

There is an FAQ document.

Reporting bugs

When you encounter a bug, first try these steps:

  1. Check whether the problem is mentioned in the FAQ.
  2. If it isn't, download and compile the latest version of GNU Parted to check whether the problem still occurs with it.

If this is the case, or you are unable to test the latest version, send a bug report to the mailing list bug-parted@gnu.org mentioning the operation attempted, the error message and the output of the following commands:

parted /dev/DEVICE print unit s print unit chs print (starting with version 1.6.23)

parted /dev/DEVICE print (before version 1.6.23)

Morevoer, if possible, please add the following information

fdisk -l /dev/DEVICE

fdisk -l -u /dev/DEVICE (if working)

Mailing Lists

There are two important mailing list for GNU Parted:

Contributing

GNU Parted needs your help! If you think you are able to contribute, send patches or write to polzer@gnu.org.

Links

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org , send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2006/03/09 15:02:34 $ $Author: skypher $

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