please package newer upstream release of parted

[Guilhem Lettron]

Parted package version is 2.3

3 new versions are out since 2.3 (2.4 3.0 and 3.1).

Why not upgrading it ? Many work have been done on EPT and that can be a good improvement for everybody.

another things : 2.4 default align to 1MiB, that can be a HUGE boost in performance for every disk with 4K block. (gparted do the same since ages).
(and I can't list all of them)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Most if not all of the changes in 2.4 were already included in the Ubuntu version. We are currently blocked on moving to 3.x until partman is rewritten to work with the new, non backward compatible libparted.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

While this is true, I'm not sure it should be blocking 3.x packaging. E.g. it could be packaged as a separate source package. With respect to partman most of the partman-$fs already use file system utils directly, but a porting plan indeed should be investigated.

[Guilhem Lettron (guilhem-fr)]

@psusi : not all, for example the 1M alignment.

More and more computer will use GPT, we must have a good tool to manage this.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

The ubuntu version of parted does do the 1M alignment and works fine on GPT.

I had suggested to Collin that we package the new version under a different source package name, but he did not want to carry both versions due to the maintenance burden on the security team, at least not for a LTS.

[Guilhem Lettron (guilhem-fr)]

sorry but the commit who activate the 1M alignment is this one : http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/parted.git/commit/?id=c749046a54d983f74f8156c0aea71b0995b9477d

And I don't see anything like this in source and patches (maybe I'm wrong, but it's hidden)

To be more precise, I do my own package (parted 3.1, a future ppa will come) and I _really_ see different when use with ubuntu-vm-builder :
In the current case, I have a disk with 4k block, my partition is 512 align and my VM is 512 align! (you see the problem I hope)

Here is for example a (bad) workaround : http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~guilhem-fr/vmbuilder/parted/revision/484

I understand the problem with 2 different versions. But when you see the parted changelog, it's unbelievable to keep an old / patchy version of somethings so central in a Linux distribution (and to see fedora with 3.1 and debian with 2.3 while it's a debian project...)

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

I'm not sure why that commit was put in as it appears to be redundant. The old code punted to device.c, which had a 1 MiB default already.

From ped_device_get_optimum_alignment:

                        /* Align to a grain of 1MiB (like vista / win7) */
                        align = ped_alignment_new(0,
                                                  1048576 / dev->sector_size);

In fact, I have had a patch pending for some time now to correct that commit, which wrongly uses a 1 MiB alignment when the underlying device requests a larger alignment that is not an even power of two.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package parted - 3.1-3

---------------
parted (3.1-3) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Upload to unstable.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:23:16 +0100