[parted-devel] parted reporting old file system names

Mike Fleetwood mike.fleetwood at googlemail.com
Wed Dec 12 23:58:05 UTC 2012


Hi,

I've been doing some testing of wiping file systems, either using the
wipefs command or by writing zeros over the whole partition, and find
that in many distribution / parted version combinations it prints the
type of the file system that use to be there, even after formatting with
a new file system.  I'm doing this for a GParted patch I am working on.
Can anybody explain the behaviour and how to fix it?

Thanks,
Mike


Details of more tested combinations in:
    GNOME Bug 688882 - Improve clearing of file system signatures
    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688882


Failing example on my Fedora 17 box with parted 3.1 (from Fedora 18
beta):
    Create a new partition and format it with jfs.  Write zeros over the
    partition, reformat it as ext2, yet parted still reports the type as
    jfs.

# parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA SAMSUNG SSD 830 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 128GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  525MB   524MB   primary   ext4            boot
 2      525MB   2673MB  2147MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)
 3      2673MB  13.4GB  10.7GB  primary   ext4
 4      13.4GB  121GB   107GB   extended
 5      13.4GB  77.8GB  64.4GB  logical   ext3
 6      77.8GB  78.4GB  524MB   logical   ext4
 7      78.4GB  80.5GB  2147MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 8      80.5GB  91.2GB  10.7GB  logical   ext4
 9      91.2GB  91.8GB  524MB   logical   ext4
10      91.8GB  93.9GB  2147MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
11      93.9GB  105GB   10.7GB  logical   ext4
12      105GB   106GB   1074MB  logical   jfs

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda12 bs=1M
# parted /dev/sda print
...
12      105GB   106GB   1074MB  logical   jfs
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda12
# wipefs /dev/sda12
offset               type
----------------------------------------------------------------
0x438                ext2   [filesystem]
                     UUID:  5fe4cc76-61be-4878-b337-b4c5c155fb0c
# parted /dev/sda print
...
12      105GB   106GB   1074MB  logical   jfs



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