[Parted-maintainers] Bug#380226: NTFS (partition) not recreated correctly after resize:incorrect start sector

[Frans Pop]

[18:36:05] <otavio> fjp: Hello
[18:36:05] <otavio> fjp: I was talking with David about the Vista bug on 
Parted and he's right about the restrictions about the partition
[18:36:06] <otavio> fjp: I would like to know if someone is dealing with 
it, on parted_server side, or if I should do that?
[18:36:07] <waldi> otavio: drop the restriction, or what breaks?
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: the problem is vista ntfs uses a different 
start sector and then we can't resize it with parted.
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: hold
[18:36:07] <waldi> i know
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: 
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=380226
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: The message sent by David explain it a bit 
better
[18:36:07] <waldi> and parted forces to change the start of the partition
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: yes
[18:36:07] <waldi> it enforces a restriction which don't exist since years
[18:36:07] <otavio> waldi: removing the align code can break other cases 
so it doesn't look to be the right option
[18:36:08] <otavio> waldi: how it doesn't exist?
[18:36:09] <waldi> at least there is nothing since years which only works 
with start on cylinder bounding
[18:36:09] <waldi> this value is not real anyway

Hi Otavio,

It seems to me this issue is too structural to discuss on IRC, or at least 
the arguments should be added to the bug report after discussing them on 
IRC.

I have sent a follow-up to the BR [1] after David's last reply, and I've 
seen no response to that yet. I do not see why we should make very 
structural changes to partman at this late point in the release, while 
IMHO it is still clearly libparted that is misbehaving.

If changes in partman are needed I would first like to see a detailed 
explanation why the existing use of ped_disk_set_partition_geom is not 
correct or how the new behavior of that function with David's patch 
applied is correct.

AFAICT it should be possible to create a patch in libparted that leaves 
the start sector of a partition being resized alone, irrespective of the 
file system that's on it. We are _not_ asking libparted to resize the 
NTFS file system, only the physical partition.

And Bastian seems to agree with that.

If changes in partman _are_ required, I'd appreciate a (tested) patch sent 
to the BTS so that others can review and comment before it is committed 
in SVN. I strongly prefer that over a direct commit given how close to 
RC2 we are.

To be very honest, I'm not at all impressed by the way this issue has been 
handled on the parted side over the past months.
Note that I estimate that I've have spent a couple of _weeks_ in total on 
both the ntfsresize and the parted issue up till now, providing solid 
information and testing since the very start. It would be very nice if 
the maintainers (both Debian and upstream) of parted would take bugs that 
screw up their users' systems a bit more seriously.

Cheers,
FJP

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=380226;msg=239
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