Bug#298020: [Parted-maintainers] Bug#298020: Suggested reopen: "298020: parted: hfs(+) support is still poorly documented"

[A. Costa]

Note: for some reason most of the following lay neglected in my
Draft folder for a few months.

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 08:10:42 +0200
Sven Luther <sven.luther at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> Well, reiserfs is a nice FS to have around when you want some data to
> disappear without a trace :)

Eek, hope you're not speaking from experience.  Still, I admire the
thought behind Reiser4, it has some interesting ideas.

> The problem is that libparted use the non-official libreiser thingy, and need
> to be switched to the official one, nobody volunteered to do the work though,
> maybe you do ?

It'd be difficult, sorry -- I'm not a maintainer, and don't know
enough yet about the unofficial libreiser package to know what needs
doing.

> Well, apart from the above, libreiserfs has been orphaned since ages.

Obviously no maintainer wants to support an utterly dead thing, but
it's unclear that the reiserfs family of stuff is no more.  For example:

	% zcat /usr/share/doc/reiser4progs/changelog.Debian.gz | head -n 5
	reiser4progs (1.0.5-1) unstable; urgency=low

	  * New upstream release.

	 -- Domenico Andreoli <cavok at debian.org>  Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:00:20 +0200

> > ...and the info page mentions 'reiserfs' dozens of times.  And a lot of
> > Debian users, (and Debian variants or offshoots), use reiser, -- for
> > example 'reiserfs' is one of the default file systems on this 'Mepis'
> > LiveCD** I have, etc. etc.
> 
> Sure, they store everything on the liveCD; and nothing vital on the filesystem
> :) Reiserfs used to be popular back then, when there where scarce
> alternatives, but i doubt there is a single distro making it  default now that
> we have ext3.

I was handed a new 'Mepis' CD by its author at LinuxWorld in Boston
this year; it's #5 at Distrowatch today, has an active user base and
is well maintained for a liveCD.

True, everything on a liveCD is (at first) stored on the CD, but
'Mepis' also includes a user-friendly interface to install itself to
hard disk and offers reiserfs as one of its file systems.  I've
run that installer with reiserfs more than once, it works OK as a
painless Debian installer.

An inductive and therefore not so reliable argument about
reliability:  'Mepis' is a popular liveCD, so its busy user forums
should have several horror stories about reiserfs, if that
was causing much data loss.  On the other hand, if users aren't
complaining, then either it's usually not that bad, or nobody ever
installs reiserfs.  Or after reiserfs new users quit Linux completely,
(gulp).

> > Suggested compromise:  how about I add a paragraph to the man page
> > cautioning Debian users about reiserfs' current not officially
> > supported status?
> 
> Yep, that would be nice. Alternatively you (or someone else) could fix the
> reiserfs situation in libparted ?

See attached for man page addition, which also includes my prior
patches.  In plain text the paragraph added reads:

  CAVEATS
       Due  to  licensing disagreements, support for reiserfs in Debian is 
       unofficial.  To get Debian's parted to  work  with  reiserfs  requires  
       installing  some  version  of   the   libreiserfs   package,   e.g.
       libreiserfs0.3-0.

I wrote 'disagreements' instead of 'conflicts' because it's not clear
whether there's an actual conflict or some folks don't mix well.
See here for a 2003 wrangle between Hans Reiser and some Debian devels
for an example of will over substance:

	plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian
	http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/debian/testing/2003/04/msg00051.html

I don't understand what's going on from that; if some reader here has
a more relevant URL that gently explains the conflict, please post it.

Summing up:  Late as can be.  Some dislike H. Reiser, others
'reiserfs'; this dislike may lead to accidental exaggerations that have
nothing to do with whatever the software's true flaws once were, are,
or might be. E.g. 'reiser' hasn't been abandoned, (as of August
anyway), and Mepis (not by Reiser) is quite active.  None of which has
too much to do with a bug about hfs, alas...

-------------- next part --------------
--- -	2005-09-16 11:44:27.057271000 -0400
+++ /tmp/parted8.gz.11799	2005-09-16 11:44:27.000000000 -0400
@@ -28,8 +28,9 @@
 .PP
 .B parted
 is a disk partitioning and partition resizing program.  It allows you to
-create, destroy, resize, move and copy ext2, ext3, linux-swap, FAT and FAT32
-partitions. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems,
+create, destroy, resize, move and copy ext2, ext3, linux-swap, FAT, FAT32, and reiserfs
+partitions.  It can create, resize and move Macintosh HFS partitions, as well as detect jfs, 
+ntfs, ufs, and xfs partitions.  It is useful for creating space for new operating systems,
 reorganising disk usage, and copying data to new hard disks.
 .SH OPTIONS
 .TP
@@ -67,7 +68,7 @@
 .TP
 .B mkfs \fIpartition\fP \fIfs-type\fP
 make a filesystem \fIfs-type\fP on \fIpartition\fP. \fIfs-type\fP can be one
-of "FAT", "ext2" or "linux-swap".
+of "fat16", "fat32", "ext2", "linux-swap" or "reiserfs".
 .TP
 .B mklabel \fIlabel-type\fP
 Creates a new disklabel (partition table) of \fIlabel-type\fP.
@@ -77,6 +78,8 @@
 .B mkpart \fIpart-type\fP \fI[fs-type]\fP \fIstart\fP \fIend\fP
 make a \fIpart-type\fP partition with filesystem \fIfs-type\fP (if specified),
 beginning at \fIstart\fP and ending at \fIend\fP (in megabytes).
+\fIfs-type\fP can be one of 
+"fat16", "fat32", "ext2", "HFS", "linux-swap", "NTFS", "reiserfs" or "ufs".
 \fIpart-type\fP should be one of "primary", "logical" or "extended"
 .TP
 .B mkpartfs \fIpart-type\fP \fIfs-type\fP \fIstart\fP \fIend\fP
@@ -115,14 +118,25 @@
 "palo".
 \fIstate\fP should be either "on" or "off"
 .RE
+.SH CAVEATS
+Due to licensing disagreements, support for reiserfs in Debian is unofficial.  To get Debian's 
+.B parted
+to work with reiserfs requires installing some version of the \fIlibreiserfs\fP package, e.g. 
+.nh
+\fIlibreiserfs0.3-0\fP.
+.hy
 .SH REPORTING BUGS
 Report bugs to <bug-parted at gnu.org>
 .SH SEE ALSO
 .BR fdisk (8),
 .BR mkfs (8),
-The \fIparted\fP program is documented fully in the
+The \fIparted\fP program is fully documented in the
+.BR info(1) 
+format
+.nh
 .IR "GNU partitioning software"
-manual available via the Info system.
+.hy
+manual; run 'info parted' to read it.
 .SH AUTHOR
 This manual page was written by Timshel Knoll <timshel at debian.org>,
 for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).