[Parted-maintainers] Bug#380608: parted doesn't show partition table sometimes

[Joshua Pritikin]

Package: parted
Version: 1.7.1-2.1
Severity: normal

Depending on the precise layout of the partition table, parted either
shows or doesn't show the partitions. For example, here is sfdisk
dump for a partition table which parted refuses to show:

# sfdisk -d /dev/sdb
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
# partition table of /dev/sdb
unit: sectors

/dev/sdb1 : start=       63, size=312576642, Id= f
/dev/sdb2 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sdb3 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sdb4 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sdb5 : start=163846998, size=67087377, Id=fd
/dev/sdb6 : start=230934438, size=80983602, Id=fd

# parted /dev/sdb print

Disk /dev/sdb: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos


                                                                          
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

On the other hand, another drive works as expected with parted.
Here is the sfdisk -d:

Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=       63, size=312576642, Id= f
/dev/sda2 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sda3 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sda4 : start=        0, size=       0, Id= 0
/dev/sda5 : start=      126, size= 8209089, Id=fd
/dev/sda6 : start=  8209278, size=73706157, Id=8e
/dev/sda7 : start=163846998, size= 8032437, Id=83
/dev/sda8 : start=263755233, size=48821472, Id=83
/dev/sda9 : start=214917633, size=48837537, Id=83

This is an annoying bug because I prefer to edit the
partition table with parted but it isn't working.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15.4-b1
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages parted depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libncurses5                   5.5-2      Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libparted1.7-1                1.7.1-2.1  The GNU Parted disk partitioning s
ii  libreadline5                  5.1-7      GNU readline and history libraries

-- no debconf information