[parted-devel] Discussion: Allow empty name for GPT partitions to fix systemd errors

[Phil Susi]

On 4/20/2017 4:01 AM, Sebastian Parschauer wrote:
> Hi Phil, Brian and others,
> 
> I'd like to point to systemd errors caused by same names for GPT
> partitions. Ours all have the name "primary" at the moment causing
> "journalctl -p err -b0" to show error messages like:
> 
> "Dev dev-disk-by\x2dpartlabel-primary.device appeared twice with
> different sysfs paths"

I have seen tons of these messages in logs attached to Ubuntu bug
reports for some time and I did not think it had anything to do with GPT
partition names.  They are very annoying that is for sure.

> Also gdisk sets default names like e.g. "Linux filesystem".
> 
> We should be able to provide GPT partitions without a name. The UEFI
> spec doesn't define if that name may be empty. It just has to be NULL
> terminated. Or can you point to a document stating explicitly that the
> name may not be empty?

Parted leaves it empty by default.

> Should we change the mkpart syntax from
> mkpart name [fs-type] start end
> to
> mkpart [name [fs-type]] start end

The name is also optional; just omit it and you get no name.