[parted-devel] Feature request: filesystem blind mode

[Jim Meyering]

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> 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.)

Sounds like a good idea.
Can you list a few file system types for which you are
certain this property holds?  (bonus points if you can indicate
an authoritative reference that backs up your assertion)

Just waiting for someone to contribute code + tests.