[parted-devel] [PATCH] cylinder boundries in msdos

[Jim Meyering]

Joel Granados Moreno wrote:
> Hello parted ppl.
>
> I have been playing with an idea and will like to share what could be a
> potential benefit to parted.  Everything starts with a question:
> Why the hell do we align to cylinder boundaries in msdos partitions?  I
> mean, how old is this, 30 years old.  IMO we should push toward rooting
> this alignment issue out of the msdos partitions and either nuke it
> completely or make it an option.
> This very simple patch illustrates my point.  I have run all test and it
> fails on a constraint test for msdos partitions (of course), but it
> fails because when the test creates a partition from 1 to 40 (sectors),
> parted allows this, so the test fails.  So this fail is expected and the
> test would have to be changed.
> Note that this change does not mean that we would stop checking for gpt
> labels and other stuff that might interfere with the msdos label.
>
> Would like some comments on this.
>
> FYI: this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The patch just takes away the
> alignment for cylinders.  More work has to be done though.

Hi Joel,

I'm all for modernizing parted so that it can use
more sensible alignment, but any new behavior must be
enabled solely via options.  The default behavior must not change.

Jim

P.S. don't read too much into "I changed XYZ and "make check" still passes".
The current test suite has very little coverage of alignment-related code.