On Sun, Jun 15, 2003 at 04:03:10PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > since the online docs are just plain confusing, i thought i'd ask here > to clarify. > > in the RH 9 Customization Guide, Chapter 5, "Managing Disk Storage", the > intro to parted claims that if you want to create or remove a partition, > "the device can not be in use". this seems to suggest that the disk must > be entirely inactive, but this is clearly not true, since i've used parted > to create a new partition on my current (and only) drive on my system. > is this claim wrong, or am i reading it incorrectly? > Sorry to responds so late. I was cleaning out my mail and noticed this one. I responded to the bug report filed about this, but I never responded on the mailing list. Just because something works for you, it doesn't mean it will work all the time or with different situations. I checked with several developers with knowledge of parted to make sure I was correct and formulated the following explanation for why this sentence is true. It will appear in the next version of the manual: "The partition table should not be modified while in use because the kernel may not properly recognize the changes. Data could be overwritten by writing to the wrong partition because the partition table and partitions mounted do not match." Better to be safe than sorry. Cheers, Tammy > also, until now, when i've used "fdisk" to add a new (logical) > partition, i've always had to reboot after the fdisk before i could use > "mkfs", since the reboot apparently allows the new partition table to be > recognized by the kernel. > > i noticed recently that you don't have to reboot with parted, which > suggests that parted somehow registers the new partition table with the > kernel automatically. can anyone explain how parted does this when fdisk > doesn't? > > thanks. > > rday > > > -- > Shrike-list mailing list > Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list -- -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
