Month: April 2013

  • parted command line rant

    Long time pet peeve of mine:

    1. parted help states, that mkpart command syntax is:

    # parted /dev/sdb help mkpart
    mkpart PART-TYPE [FS-TYPE] START END make a partition

    But, PART-TYPE is actually only supported for msdos and dvh partition tables. For gpt, it’s silently changed to:

    mkpart NAME START END

    There are so many examples around the internet, where people keep typing:

    mkpart primary ext4 1024kb 2tb

    and they just end up with partition named “primary” usually without even noticing.

    2. I cannot find a way to omit partition name from command line. From parted interactive mode one can just hit Enter when prompted for partition name:

    (parted) mkpart
    Partition name? []?
    File system type? [ext2]?

    but apparently I can’t find a way to skip it in script mode:

    # parted /dev/sdb mkpart "" 0% 300G
    End? ^C

    Rant done 🙂