[parted-devel] Feature request: filesystem blind mode

[H. Peter Anvin]

Something I have found absolutely infuriating with parted at various 
times is that it will not let me do things like resize or relocate 
partitions if it doesn't understand the filesystem inside.

There is no override, at least not one that I can find.

For a lot of filesystems, that's just plain wrong, since:

- Many (but not *all*) filesystems can be relocated without any binary 
changes to the filesystem at all.

- Many filesystems can be resized using online tools.  For those 
filesystems, it is actively *undesirable* for parted to do at least 
filesystem growing, since it contributes unnecessary downtime.

- Parted doesn't know all filesystems, and even some common filesystems 
(e.g. ext3) it doesn't seem to know all the options.

It would be Really Nice[TM] to be able to tell parted to simply treat 
the filesystem as an opaque binary object, and not try to do anything 
other than transitive relocation or passive resizing (opaque partition 
mode.)  For certain recovery tasks, it's also desirable to be able to 
manipulate the partitions as invisible containers, without *any* impact 
on the rest of the disk contents (raw disk mode.)

Thanks for the consideration.

	-hpa