info/disk_partitions hangs when a usb stick has a GPT partiton table

[Jeff Lane ]

I tried testing with a USB stick installed that happened to have a GPT partition table. This was because the stick had been made into a bootable USB drive for installing 14.04 via EFI.

During the test, c-c-s seemed to hang indefinitely (I let it sit for at least 15 minutes) at this point:
----------------------------[ info/disk_partitions ]----------------------------
Attaches information about disk partitions
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Running... (output in /home/ubuntu/.cache/plainbox/sessions/pbox-bxbrcb08.session/2013.com.canonical.certification__info_disk_partitions.*)

I logged into the server through another ssh session and ran parted (that's all this script does is 'parted -l')

and found that parted was hung waiting on input to ignore or fix the GPT table:

ubuntu@pn4rf:~$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST3500320AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ext4 boot

Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will
be used.
OK/Cancel? ok
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/sdb appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an
extra 4024320 blocks) or continue with the current setting?
Fix/Ignore?

To get around this, parted provides a -s option that ignores anything needing user intervention:

ubuntu@pn4rf:~$ sudo parted -l -s
Model: ATA ST3500320AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ext4 boot

Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/sdb appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 4024320 blocks) or continue with the current setting?
Model: Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 4063MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 1 1049kB 2002MB 2001MB fat32 boot

So to fix this, we need to append -s to the command for this job.