GNU parted NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-

* 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

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