Revisions

by Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com

Last Web page update: 1/9/2013

I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page, and the associated software, is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find GPT fdisk or this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!

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Note: This page is part of the documentation for my GPT fdisk program.

The following summarizes changes in GPT fdisk's public releases:

• 0.8.6 (1/9/2013)—This version adds a number of minor features, such as type codes for a Sony System Partition and for VMWare ESX, a new check in the verification code, and support for building under Solaris. It also includes a fix to the hybrid MBR creation support that could cause it to omit the 0xEE partition under some circumstances and a fix for a bug that could cause a crash when passing a partition number of 0 via the -t option.
• 0.8.5 (5/30/2012)—This version makes a couple of minor changes. The one you're most likely to notice is the introduction of new partition type codes for Midnight BSD (A580–A585). I've also changed how the program handles disk errors on writing a GPT table, so that a disk sync is more likely to be performed. This is in response to a problem that I suspect may have been caused by a virus scanner blocking write access to the MBR on a Windows machine.
• 0.8.4 (3/25/2012)—Shortly after releasing 0.8.3, I learned that my Ctrl+D fixes had been inadequate, so I'm releasing this version. Previously, pressing Ctrl+D during entry of most text (partition names or sector numbers, for instance) would lock the program in an infinite loop; and launching gdisk in a Terminal window via sudo and then closing the window would leave gdisk running, consuming CPU time. This version fixes both of these problems.
• 0.8.3 (3/23/2012)—This version offers a few minor improvements and bug fixes. The gdisk program now states the name of the disk that's been modified after a write operation, and a bug has been fixed that caused sgdisk to incorrectly truncate the sizes of over-2TiB partitions on 32-bit (but not 64-bit) systems. This version also improves the handling of Ctrl+D on some systems and includes a fix to enable proper compilation under GCC 4.7.
• 0.8.2 (1/22/2012)—The most noticeable change in this version for most users is the fact that the default value for the first sector, when specifying a partition's start point in gdisk, is now properly aligned. This saves the need for an automatic alignment-related change if the user presses the Enter key for this value. This version also fixes some minor bugs: It handles Ctrl+D properly and it fixes improper handling some some partition tables created by Solaris tools.
• 0.8.1 (10/1/2011)—This is a bug-fix version. It includes a fix that corrects incorrect CRC alerts on disks created by libefi in ZFS, a bug in partition-overlap code for MBR disks, and fixes for some other very obscure problems. The program also now detects and corrects infinite loops in MBR logical partition lists. See the NEWS file for details.
• 0.8.0 (9/10/2011)—This version is most notable for its addition of the cgdisk program to the GPT fdisk family. cgdisk is a cfdisk workalike, and is likely to be an easier introduction to partitioning for new users. This version also provides some minor bug fixes and other changes; see the NEWS file for details.
• 0.7.2 (6/26/2011)—This version adds two important new features: generation of true GUIDs (vs. purely random numbers) in the Windows version (the Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X versions have created true GUIDs for quite a while); and support for a new Linux-specific GUID type code. If you're having problems compiling the software with ICU Unicode support under Linux, FreeBSD, or OS X, you can now disable it; see the README file for details. This version also includes a number of bug fixes; see the NEWS file for details.
• 0.7.1 (3/21/2011)—This version adds support for true UTF-16LE encoding in the partition name fields for the Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X versions of the program. (The Windows version doesn't include this support for reasons detailed in the README.Windows file. Previous versions used a "quick and dirty" method that only worked properly for ASCII characters. This version should now work correctly for all Unicode characters; however, it does depend on proper locale settings and font support. This version also includes a few bug fixes, including one that prevented the protected MBR from being written when restoring a GPT backup. See the NEWS file for additional details.
• 0.7.0 (3/12/2011)—The big change with this version is the FixParts utility (program name fixparts), which is intended to repair certain types of broken MBR partition tables. See the separate FixParts Web page for details on this program. Also new in this version is revamped MBR-creation code, a change to the minimum disk size that's forced to a minimum 8-sector alignment to 300 GB, and assorted bug fixes. See the NEWS file for details.
• 0.6.14 (1/8/2011)—This version features a few minor bug fixes and improvements, including adding the ability to specify partition start and end points in relative fashion in sgdisk's -n (--new) option, a change to APM detection code that will detect old APM data even if an MBR has been written atop an APM disk, and the addition of three new ChromeOS GUID partition type codes to those recognized by GPT fdisk.
• 0.6.13 (10/12/2010)—Minor bug fixes to the GPT-to-MBR conversion motivate this release. Specifically, the previous version did not permit any partitions to be logical when four or fewer partitions were converted. This has been fixed, as has a bug that could sometimes create an extended partition that overlapped with a primary partition by one sector.
• 0.6.12 (10/7/2010)—This version features several minor bug fixes and improvements. Most of these relate to the handling of disks with logical sector sizes of other than 512 bytes. I've also added support for "P" (pebibyte) suffixes for partition sizes (just in case you've got a thousand-disk RAID array!) and I've fixed an obscure bug that caused a segfault in sgdisk if you entered the (invalid) "-A show" parameter. As usual, consult the NEWS file for more details.
• 0.6.11 (9/22/2010)—This version emphasizes enhancements to disk verification and GUID entry features. The verify (v in gdisk or -v/--verify in sgdisk) function now checks for some common MBR problems, including overlapping partitions and proper placement of the 0xEE protective partition. There's also added protection against accidentally creating a hybrid MBR or MBR conversion with duplicate partitions, which was possible in previous versions. Entry of GUIDs in separate chunks in gdisk is no longer supported (it was an awkward method), and in sgdisk, the -t/--typecode option now accepts either a hex code value (e.g., 0700) or a GUID value. Finally, sgdisk adds a new option, -F/--first-aligned-in-largest, which returns the first usable partition, given the current alignment value, in the largest block of free sectors. This is similar to the -f/--first-in-largest function, but probably more useful in practice.
• 0.6.10 (8/22/2010)—New in this version is support for changing partition attributes using sgdisk (via the -A/--attributes option) and the ability to copy one disk's partition table to another disk in both sgdisk and gdisk (via -R/--replicate in sgdisk or u on gdisk's experts' menu). There are also a number of bug fixes, including one for backwards interpretation of attribute values in gdisk, improper destruction of MBR boot code when creating a hybrid MBR, and an inaccessible -C/--recompute-chs option in sgdisk.
• 0.6.9 (7/4/2010)—This version fixes a major bug in GPT fdisk's hybrid MBR creation. The bug caused incorrect end-sector (length) values to be created for the protective (0xEE) partition. This bug does NOT affect the standard protective MBR on non-hybrid disks.
• 0.6.8 (5/23/2010)—This version implements a number of minor new features and bug fixes. Most notably, the h experts' menu option (-C or --recompute-chs in sgdisk) recomputes all the CHS values in the MBR; the new -N or --largest-new sgdisk option creates a single partition that fills the largest available space; a new f experts' menu option (-G or --randomize-guids in sgdisk) randomizes all a disk's GUIDs; and -u/--partition-guid and -U/--disk-guid options in sgdisk enable setting partition and disk GUIDs. There are also fixes to enable the program to compile in FreeBSD and Microsoft Visual C++ (both were broken in 0.6.7), a minor sgdisk man page correction to --change-name, and new tests to prevent accidetally opening a directory or certain other file types as a disk device.
• 0.6.7 (5/1/2010)—GPT fdisk is now over a year old! This version is a minor bug-fix release. The most important bug to be squashed is one that caused a segfault on startup with certain rare bad partition tables. Others include a bug that produced incorrect partition number reports for some verification problems and a bug that caused a ridiculous claim of petabytes of free space on disks of 0 size (such as empty files or at least one user's malfunctioning hard disk).
• 0.6.6 Spanish—David García Barrero (dgbarrero@gmail.com) has contributed a Spanish translation of version 0.6.6 of GPT fdisk. Check the 0.6.6 folder of the GPT fdisk Sourceforge page to locate it.
• 0.6.6 (3/21/2010)—I've released this version mainly to get some new partition-alignment code out there. Specifically, I see that Western Digital now has a "640GB" (~596GiB) Advanced Format drive, and I don't want its users to be burned by misaligned partitions. Following discussions with a user and some additional research, I've also found that 1MiB (2048-sector) alignment is a good idea with some types of RAID array. Therefore, I've changed GPT fdisk to use a 2048-sector alignment by default on new drives, although the program attempts to identify and use smaller alignment values on disks that are already partitioned with them. Other changes include naming two new attribute bits (as per UEFI 2.3 specifications) and changing the behavior when the user specifies restoring a backup file that doesn't exist. As usual, you should consult the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.5 (3/7/2010)—The big new feature in this version is the ability to perform a GPT-to-MBR conversion with the possibility of placing logical partitions on the converted disk. This ability is dependent upon the presence of free (unallocated) space before each to-be-logical partition, though, so it's not guaranteed to convert every partition on every disk. It also obviously doesn't overcome the 2 TiB limit. See the updated Converting to or from GPT page for details. The Windows version also now works on disks with other-than-512-byte sector sizes. There are also a few other minor improvements and bug fixes; see the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.4-2 (2/20/2010)—The initial 0.6.4 release compiled fine on my test systems, which use GCC 4.3.x, but restructuring of GCC header files in GCC 4.4.x necessitated a minor change, so I released it as 0.6.4-2. I also incorporated a user-submitted patch to the Makefile to have the compiler pass on the user's CXXFLAGS and similar environment variables at compile time. Note that this doesn't affect the compiled program (depending on environment variables), so I've not released new binaries on Sourceforge. This release is purely to help users compile the software locally with GCC 4.4.x.
• 0.6.4 (2/19/2010)—This version makes a number of minor improvements and fixes a number of minor bugs. The biggest improvements are the addition of a transpose option (to change partition numbers) in both gdisk and sgdisk and the addition of the ability to create hybrid MBRs and to convert from GPT to MBR in sgdisk (this function has long been present in gdisk). Bug fixes include one that prevented the Windows version from saving backup files and a number related to sgdisk options. See the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.3 (2/3/2010)—This version fixes a major data-corruption bug on big-endian systems (PowerPC, for instance). You should not use earlier versions of GPT fdisk on such systems! At one time it did work, but the bug crept in somewhere along the line. This bug does not affect the program when compiled on little-endian (x86, x86-64, etc.) systems. This version also introduces some changes to the GUID code, including fixing some duplicate GPT internal type code duplicates and changing the random GUID generation function to use libuuid, which should produce more technically correct GUIDs than the simple random number generator I'd been using before. (The Windows version continues to use the simple random number generator, though.)
• 0.6.2 (1/29/2010)—This version employs a number of minor bug fixes and improvements, mostly related to the detection and handling of damaged GPT data structures. The t (change type code) option also now changes the partition's name if and only if the current name is identical to the original type code's generic name. The biggest change is the addition of Windows support. The current source compiles using the MinGW compiler (I used the Linux cross-compiler version); I don't know if it will compile with anything else.
• 0.6.1 (1/20/2010)—This is a bug-fix release that fixes three bugs: Run under 32-bit (x86) FreeBSD, the previous version reported incorrect disk sizes; under any FreeBSD version, it couldn't use disk images; and its BSD disklabel conversion incorrectly reported that the BSD disklabel was of an unknown type.
• 0.6.0 (1/15/2010)—Two important changes appear with this version: Support for disks with logical sector sizes other than 512 bytes and the new sgdisk program. I've used a magneto-optical (MO) drive with 2048-byte sectors to develop the non-512-byte sector size code. In theory, it should work with other sector sizes, but 512 and 2048 are the only ones I've tested. One caveat: Through at least version 2.6.32.3, a Linux kernel bug prevents use of disks with other-than-512-byte sectors. I found a patch for this bug here. Alternatively, you can download the modified efi.c file, place it in /usr/src/linux/fs/partitions, and recompile your kernel. If this is over your head, you'll need to wait for your distribution to incorporate this patch. FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows are unaffected by this bug. The sgdisk program is a command-line tool with a subset of gdisk's features. It's intended for use in scripts (backup/restore scripts, scripts to prepare large numbers of disks in uniform ways, etc.). It's also very new. Although sgdisk uses the same code as gdisk for all data structures and functions, the user interface is new and is arguably not as clean as it should be. Bug reports and suggestions for improvement are welcome. You'll need the popt development headers to compile sgdisk (libpopt-dev or something similar). The popt run-time libraries are installed on most systems by default, so nothing new should be required if you install a binary package. In addition to these new features, this version includes a few bug fixes and very minor changes. The most notable bug fix is one that causes the convert-to-MBR function to work again (it broke a few versions back and I didn't notice it until recently). I also found that the logical/physical sector detection code wasn't working, so I've switched to using the 8-sector boundaries on drives larger than 800 GiB and 1-sector boundaries on smaller drives. This seems reasonable since the Advanced Format drives are all 1 TiB or larger.
• 0.5.3—This version fixes bugs in the display of GUID values when gdisk is compiled with some versions of GCC. The program also now detects the number of logical sectors per physical sector with Linux 2.6.32 and later, but not with earlier Linux kernels, FreeBSD, or OS X.
• 0.5.2—The appearance of Western Digital drives using the Advanced Format feature motivated this version, which aligns partitions on 4KiB (8-sector) boundaries by default. As described on the Partitioning Advice page, this alignment improves performance (or perhaps minimizes performance degradation) on such disks. The 'l' and 'd' experts' menu options change and display the number of sectors used in the alignment blocks.
• 0.5.1—This version fixes some bugs related to the expansion of hardware RAID arrays. When disks are added to hardware RAID arrays, the backup GPT header and partition table will appear to be somewhere earlier than the end of the disk, and previous versions became confused by this. Version 0.5.1 handles this situation better, and the 'e' option on the experts' menu will move the backup data structures to the end of the disk, where they belong. Note that if a RAID array has been fully allocated and a disk is added, it will be impossible to add more partitions until this operation is performed.
• 0.5.0—The bump to version 0.5.0 mostly reflects a new menu structure, which includes the main menu and the experts' menu from previous versions, along with a recovery & transformation menu. Other new features include a new GPT-to-MBR conversion, the ability to reload an MBR as a way of creating a new GPT, and generation of valid CHS values when creating hybrid MBRs or in the new GPT-to-MBR conversion. This version also incorporates a few bug fixes, including a fix for one that could cause data loss when using the "zap" function in version 0.4.2.
• 0.4.2—The only significant new feature in this version is the ability to work on disk image files as well as actual disks. This feature is intended to enable editing of disk images used in emulators, although you'll only be able to work on "raw" disk images, not the more advanced formats used by QEMU, VMWare, etc. This version also includes a number of minor bug fixes and feature improvements, such as additional prompts or warnings in certain potentially destructive commands.
• 0.4.1—Two improvements appear in this version: First, the method of specifying partition start and end points has been expanded to enable both absolute and relative sector specifications. See the Walkthrough page for details. Second, hybrid MBR synchronization has been improved. If you delete a GPT partition for which a corresponding MBR partition exists, the corresponding partition is deleted and, if possible, the protective 0xEE (EFI GPT) partition is expanded to fill the newly freed disk space. MBR/GPT correspondence checks have also been added to the verify (v on the main menu) command and before writing disk changes.
• 0.4.0—This version marks some major extensions to GPT fdisk: It now runs correctly on big-endian systems (an ancient PowerPC running Linux is my test platform) and it compiles and runs correctly on FreeBSD. I've also added support for converting BSD disklabels to GPT format—but BSD disklabels are tricky, so use that feature cautiously. (See the updated Converting to GPT page for details.) New partitions are now given a default name based on the partition type. This version also includes several smaller bug fixes and some code reorganization.
• 0.3.4—Fixed a few minor bugs, including one that enabled accidental entry of MBR partition type 0x00 during hybrid MBR creation and another that prevented acceptance of default end sector number under certain conditions when creating new GPT partitions. Added Debian binary packages to distribution set.
• 0.3.3—This version gives the user the ability to specify whether to create the EFI GPT (0xEE) partition before or after other partitions in a hybrid MBR configuration.
• 0.3.2—This version adds a couple of new features, namely the ability to create a hybrid MBR and the ability to clear the GPT data structures from a disk (in case you want to re-use it as an MBR or some other type of disk). See the Hybrid MBRs section of this document for details on that feature.
• 0.3.1—This version fixes a few bugs, including one that could cause a segfault under specific circumstances. It also adds Mac OS X support, thanks to two anonymous contributors.
• 0.3.0—This version added the ability to enter "raw" GUIDs as a single string rather than as five separate numbers. It also fixed a few very minor bugs. I bumped up the second version number from 2 to 3 and called this version the first beta release because I'd received several reports of successful uses of earlier versions of the program and no bug reports, aside from one compilation issue. I also added precompiled RPMs for 32-bit (Fedora 11) and 64-bit (OpenSUSE 11) distributions.
• 0.2.2—Fixed a compilation problem with GCC 4.4.0.
• 0.2.1—This was the first version released on Sourceforge and on my own Web page. It fixed a number of minor bugs, added a few partition type codes, and cleaned up the code a bit.
• 0.2.0—This was the first version to be shown to anybody aside from myself.

Additional details can be found in the NEWS file in the main tarball (or other package files).

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