Comment 6 for bug 457281

This turns out to be a bit deeper of an issue than anticipated; we're using parted to create a partition/filesystem during image conversion time for KVM. parted currently does not support the creation of an ext3 partition using mkpartfs (and, since the partition is in the middle of the disk image, we cannot use 'mkfs.ext3'/etc since these tools do not support offsets). We're avoiding the use of loopback devices to mitigate the chances of hitting a race (no atomic 'get a free and attach loopback device). We're looking into this problem in order to determine if there is solid mechanism for creating an ext3 filesystem in the middle of a large disk file.