mkpartfs problem

[Phil Williams]

Hi,

I encountered a problem trying to use the mkpartfs command from a Parted 1.6.2
root disk: I wanted to create a small FAT32 partition so I resized /dev/hda2
giving me the following:

        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-1033.593 megabytes
        Disk label type: msdos
        Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
        1          0.031      7.875  primary   ext3        
        2          7.875    846.562  primary   ext3        
        3        911.531   1033.593  primary   linux-swap  
        Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.           
  
and I tried to create the FAT32 partition with the following command:

  $ parted /dev/hda mkpartfs primary fat32 846.562 911.531

but received the following error:

        Warning: Unable to align partition properly.  This probably means that 
another
        partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it 
didn't have
        the correct BIOS geometry.  It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
        (fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
        Ignore/Cancel? i                                                        
        Error: Unable to satisfy all constraints on the partition. 
        Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary. 

So, I tried running mkpart and then mkfs:

  $ parted /dev/hda mkpart primary 846.562 911.531

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

  $ parted /dev/hda mkfs 4 fat32

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

and lo and behold:

        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-1033.593 megabytes
        Disk label type: msdos
        Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
        1          0.031      7.875  primary   ext3        
        2          7.875    846.562  primary   ext3        
        4        846.562    911.531  primary   fat32       
        3        911.531   1033.593  primary   linux-swap  
        Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.  

This is reproducible on my system, so let me know if there is anything you would
like me to try.

Also, I tried creating an even smaller FAT32 partition at one point and received
the following error:

        'Error: Partition too big/small for a fat32 file system'

It would be helpful if Parted would print the acceptable range of sizes for a
FAT32 file system.

Thanks,
Phil.

Parted kicks ass, btw :-)