SURVEY: precision in GNU Parted's user interface

[Andrew Clausen]

Hi all,

I would like everyone who has time to complete this 4-question
multiple-choice survey about the new proposed user interface of Parted
which is currently available in CVS.  Please email your responses to
address@hidden, with answers in this (greppable) format:

        Q1: B
        Q2: A
        Q3: C
        Q4: D  (I would expect a segmentation fault.)

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING:
This survey is about the extent to which Parted should "do what you
said" versus "do what you meant".  Important notes:
 * The new Parted user interface allows you to demand "do exactly what I
said" by prefixing numbers with the equals sign (=).
 * Some other programs do not function properly if partitions are not
aligned to cylinder boundaries.
 * Most Unix utilities now use SI units (physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units).
According to this standard, one kilobyte (1 kB) is 1000 bytes and one
megabyte (1 MB) is 1000 kilobytes.  The new Parted interface uses SI units.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTION 1:  Suppose you have a hard disk with one partition:

        (parted) print
        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0kB - 64GB
        Disk label type: msdos
        Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
        1       599MB   19GB    19GB    primary   ext2

Moreover, suppose that the more verbose "megabytes" units mode appears
as follows:

        (parted) unit mb
        (parted) print
        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0MB - 64424MB
        Disk label type: msdos
        Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
        1       599MB   19599MB 19599MB primary   ext2

Now, if you typed the following...

        (parted) mkpartfs
        Partition type?  primary/extended? primary
        File system type?  [ext2]? ext2
        Start? 20gb
        End? 30gb

...where would you expect this new partition to begin?

(A) Immediately after the first partition.
(B) Exactly at 20GB (i.e. 20000MB), leaving a 400MB gap between the
partitions.
(C) At the start of the closest cylinder to 20000MB.
(D) Other.  (Please specify)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTION 2:  This question refers to the same partition table from
question 1.  This question is about the "sectors" unit.  A sector is a
unit of information that has 512 bytes.  Most hardware and operating
system software "talks" natively in sector units.  In Parted, you can
specify the sector unit with "s".  For example, "100s" refers to the
101st sector, or the 51201st byte on a disk.  In sector units, the above
partition table looks like this:

        (parted) unit s
        (parted) print
        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0s - 125829121s
        Disk label type: msdos
        Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
        1       1171840s 38281215s 37109376s primary   ext2

Suppose you typed in the following:

        (parted) mkpartfs
        Partition type?  primary/extended? primary
        File system type?  [ext2]? ext2
        Start? 33s
        End? 1100000s

Where would you expect this partition to end?

(A) At 1100000s.
(B) At 1171839s.  That is, immediately before partition 2.
(C) At the closest cylinder boundary below 1171839s.
(D) At the end of the closest cylinder to 1100000s.
(E) Other.  (Please specify)

Q2 ANSWER: [insert here]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTION 3: Where would you expect the newly created partition from
question 2 to begin?

(A) At 33s.
(B) At the first valid location after the partition table.
(C) At the start of the closest cylinder (assuming this is closer than (B)).
(D) Other.  (Please specify)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTION 4: This question is about resizing.  Suppose you have a
partition table that looks like this:

        (parted) print
        Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0kB - 64GB
        Disk label type: msdos
        Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
        1       1003MB  1800MB  796MB   primary   fat32

Now suppose you typed the following command:

        (print) resize 1 1gb 2gb

Where would you expect the FAT32 partition to be resized to?  (Note that
Parted is capable of non-destructively moving the start of FAT partitions.)

(A) Start and end unchanged.
(B) 1GB - 2GB.  (i.e. starting at 1000MB and ending at 2000MB.)
(C) Starting at 1003MB and ending at 2GB.
(D) Starting at 1003MB and ending at the closest cylinder to 2GB.
(E) The start at the closest cylinder boundary to 1GB and the end at
the closest cylinder boundary to 2GB.
(F) Other.  (Please specify)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Thanks,
Andrew