Re: parted bug, don't read the partition table

[Jim Meyering]

jdd wrote:
> This is a report from a bug found in openSUSE 11.2 and reported in
> openSUSE bugzilla here:
>
> https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=598464
>
> In short, in some obscure circomstances (obscure because I don't know
> how I happen to have such a drive), parted refuses to read the
> partition table when util-linux fdisk do.
>
> Fdisk reading the table allowed me to change it, allowing me to keep
> working two actual partitions, when parted only allowed me to start a
> raw new table.
>
> the problem lies in disk having an extended partition overlapping a
> primary one on an old disk having held windows and openSUSE several
> times for several years
>
> the bug is both in the last (two days ago) partedmagic cd and on
> openSUSE 11.2 parted (parted (GNU parted) 1.9.0)
>
> what is the way to make this bug fixed else than writing here?

Thanks for reporting it.
That's a good first step.
The second is to make it easy to reproduce the problem.
Do you know how to do that?

If you can do that (esp. if you can do it just
using parted and say, dd), that will go a long ways.

Then someone needs to debug the problem and decide whether/how
to diagnose it better.

Considering that this problem is very unlikely
to affect many people, and that the fix will only make it
easier for those few to diagnose a corrupt partition table,
fixing it has low priority.

Hence, the more you can do, the more likely it is to be fixed.

If you're still interested in a few weeks, and nothing
has happened here, you're welcome to ping me, but there's no
guarantee that I'll have time to invest in it.