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

[Håkon Løvdal]

By the way, an identical request was made earlier which did not trigger
any further discussion,
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2016-02/msg00009.html.

On 20 April 2017 at 10:01, Sebastian Parschauer <sparschauer at suse.de> 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"
>
> 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?
>
> Should we change the mkpart syntax from
> mkpart name [fs-type] start end
> to
> mkpart [name [fs-type]] start end
> ?
>
> That doesn't provide us a chance to provide the fs-type with empty name.
>
> Or should we use a special keyword like this:
> mkpart \<empty\> [fs-type] start end
>
> I prefer the special key word. That just causes
> /dev/disk/by-partlabel/\x3cempty\x3e
> to be created in case this feature is not implemented.
>
> What are your thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
> Sebastian
>