* Mark <bts@bts.grml.org> [20080805 04:02]:

> The bugs.debian links are not working right now, so I'll just shoot from the hip.

> Anything 6 years old has bugs of its own....that's archaic, even by Debian
> standards.  Run vol_id in another tty to get labels.  This is the first I've
> seen label trouble in GNU cfdisk and as bugs go, that's a minor affair.  But
> both programs have quirks.  We could debate forever.

It's NOT that someone can't "get labels" (of course we all know of
the existence of vol_id) but GNU fdisk has a serious problem with
several partitions and does not start at all then!

> Since grml is a sysadmin distro, it should have both tools on CD.  Not every
> machine has net connections when repair/setup needs to happen.

> Debian packages that kill each other are poorly designed, and grml *should*
> deviate.  That is, include both programs, but not by means of Debian packaging.
>  A zsh/bash script/alias for 'cfdisk' can prompt for user choice.

If we want to ship GNU fdisk together with util-linux (which we need
as dependency for other packages as well) we have to solve
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=461888 somehow.

It wouldn't be such a problem to work around this issue if GNU fdisk
wouldn't fail due to the "unrecognised disk label" problem. But
users were REALLY annoyed by this cfdisk problem and we had to get
rid of GNU fdisk therefore (just see
http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue417 to get an idea, I got several
mails regarding this issue). If we would work around this issue
using a script/alias users still might encounter problems when
scripting cfdisk (like 'cfdisk -P s /dev/ice') without noticing the
difference between GNU fdisk and util-linux behind the cfdisk
binary.

I'll ping the maintainer of GNU fdisk regarding #461888, lets' see
what options we have.

regards,
-mika-