[parted-devel] Partition move function

[Jim Meyering]

Phillip Susi wrote:
> It has come to my attention that gparted can correctly move ext3/4
> partitions while parted can not.  It seems that gparted has its own move
> implementation instead of using the one in libparted.  I was wondering,
> is this the case, and if so, why has that not been moved to libparted so
> that both can benefit from it?

I presume that moving a file system may require knowledge of the internals
of that file system, and Parted is getting rid of its FS-manipulation
functionality (which includes "move", "check", "mkfs", etc.)  Note that
any FS-aware code in parted is probably broken when it comes to operating
on a system with >512-byte sectors.

> When I try moving a partition with parted, it complains about what
> feature bits are in use on the filesystem, but why does it care?
> Shouldn't it just be reading a number of blocks from the original
> location and writing them to the destination?  Well, I suppose it would
> be nice to consult the block allocation bitmap so you can skip blocks
> not in use, but not strictly required.

If you can come up with reliable FS-independent code
to move a partition and its file system, please post it.