[parted-devel] parted-2.1 released [stable]

[Jim Meyering]

While this release adds some features, they are new interfaces or changes
enabled only via a new option, or via the presence of a new on-disk bit.
As such, they should be "safe" enough that I can still call this a
stable release.

Special thanks to Hans De Goede for numerous fixes and additions.

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  http://git.debian.org/?p=parted/parted.git;a=shortlog;h=v2.0
or run this command from a git-cloned parted directory:
  git shortlog v2.0..v2.1

To summarize the gnulib-related changes, run these commands from a
git-cloned parted directory:
  git checkout v2.0
  git submodule summary v2.1

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-2.1.tar.gz   (2.8MB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-2.1.tar.xz   (1.4MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-2.1.tar.gz.sig
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-2.1.tar.xz.sig

To reduce load on the main server, use a mirror listed at:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact.  First,
be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball.
Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify parted-2.1.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys B9AB9A16

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.65.8-b4f0a
  Automake 1.11a
  Gnulib v0.0-3019-g213efc0
  Gperf 3.0.3

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]

** New features

  new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
  none:     Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
  cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
  minimal:  Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  optimal:  Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  The minimal and optimal  values will use layout information provided by the
  disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
  blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
  align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
  degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
  block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
  The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
  libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
  behave as the none --align value.

  libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
  ped_disk_set_flag()
  ped_disk_get_flag()
  ped_disk_is_flag_available()
  ped_disk_flag_get_name()
  ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
  ped_disk_flag_next()

  libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
  (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
  is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.

  libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
    - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
    start sector number for a given "disk".
    - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
    for a given "disk".

  new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
  of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk.  E.g.,
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
  information from devices:
  ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
  ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
  information about alignment enforced by the disk type.

** Bug fixes

  parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
  Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
  [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]

  improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
  4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
  when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".

  gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
  were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
  known-corrupt primary table.

  improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
  ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
  would fail.  This is fixed now.

  handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
  properly.

  when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names
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