Bug#265194: resizing needs to be mentioned more in the partitioning utility
On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 09:48:28AM -0700, Dustin Harriman wrote:
>
> Showing this diagram (with better formatting) in the docs (above) would go
> a long way:
partman can create file systems that parted cannot. But you are right
that the installation manual lacks an information about resizing and
copying abilities.
> 1. For ext2, ext3 and reiserfs: the start of the partition must stay
> fixed.
In the present implementation in partman the start of the partition
stays fixed also for fat16 and fat32.
> 2. For ext2, ext3: the partition you copy to must be bigger or exactly
> the same size as the partition you copy from.
Ok.
> 3. For ext2 and ext3: the checking is limited to ensuring the resize
> and copy commands will be ok.
Partman doesn't check the file system visibly so there is no need to
mention this in the manual.
> 4. For fat: the size of the new partition after resizing or copying is
> restricted by the cluster size. Parted can shrink the cluster size, so
> you can always shrink your partition. However, if you can't use FAT32
> for some reason, you may not be able to grow your partition.
> 5. Parted supports both FAT16 and FAT32. Parted can convert file
> systems between FAT16 and FAT32, if necessary.
Ok.
> 6. Reiserfs support is enabled if you install libreiserfs, available at
> http://reiserfs.osdn.org.ua. (It is likely to be availabe soon from
> http://www.namesys.com)
I haven't checked whether libreiserfs is packaged as udeb.
> IMHO, Therefore a huge majority of "Windows refugees" would want this
> feature.
I agree.
> Upon further investigation, "qtparted" is just a fancy gui that makes
> calls to command line utilities. To resize NTFS partitions, it calls the
> "ntfsresize" command, which comes in the Debian package "ntfstools".
Partman doesn't use parted as a command line utility but in principe it
is possible to invoke ntfsresize.
> Is there some political reason that GNU parted must be the only
> utility allowing the resizing of partitions?
One reason that there is no enough time before the release of sarge (but
who knows). Another reason is that ntfstools are not yet packaged as
udeb.
> In other words, are there any non-obvious barriers to adding NTFS resizing
> in d-i, granted the ntfsresize utility is sitting there begging to be used
> for this purpose?
No. However I think there are some efforts to add to parted support to
resize ntfs by external library (as this is done with reiserfs).
Anton Zinoviev
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