gparted/README
Mike Fleetwood af3c949747 Remove mention of devkit-disks from README
Missed at the time by commit:
    ddb334705e
    Remove support for obsolete devkit-disks automount inhibitor
2022-11-12 16:44:55 +00:00

346 lines
12 KiB
Text

GPARTED
=======
Gparted is the GNOME Partition Editor for creating, reorganizing, and
deleting disk partitions.
A hard disk is usually subdivided into one or more partitions. These
partitions are normally not re-sizable (making one smaller and the
adjacent one larger.) Gparted makes it possible for you to take a
hard disk and change the partition organization, while preserving the
partition contents.
More specifically, Gparted enables you to create, destroy, resize,
move, check, label, and copy partitions, and the file systems
contained within. This is useful for creating space for new operating
systems, reorganizing disk usage, and mirroring one partition with
another (disk imaging).
Gparted can also be used with storage devices other than hard disks,
such as USB flash drives, and memory cards.
Visit https://gparted.org for more information.
LICENSING
---------
GParted is released under the General Public License version 2, or (at
your option) any later version. (GPLv2+). All files are released under
the GPLv2+ unless explicitly licensed otherwise.
The GParted Manual is released under the GNU Free Documentation License
version 1.2 or any later version. (GFDLv1.2+).
Google Test C++ test framework is released under the 3-Clause BSD
License. (BSD-3-Clause).
See these files for more details:
COPYING - GNU General Public License version 2
COPYING-DOCS - GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2
lib/gtest/LICENSE
- 3-Clause BSD License
NEWS
----
Information about changes to this release, and past releases can be
found in the file:
NEWS
INSTALL
-------
a. Pre-built Binary
Many GNU/Linux distributions already provide a pre-built binary
package for GParted. Instructions on how to install GParted on
some distributions is given below:
CentOS/RHEL
-----------
su -
yum install gparted
Debian or Ubuntu
----------------
sudo apt install gparted
Fedora
------
su -
dnf install gparted
OpenSUSE
--------
sudo zypper install gparted
b. Building from Source
Briefly, build and install GParted into the default location of
/usr/local using:
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo install -m 644 org.gnome.gparted.policy \
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.gnome.gparted.local.policy
This assumes all the dependencies are already installed, builds the
default configuration and polkit is being used as the graphical su
program.
The following dependencies are required to build GParted from source:
g++
make
parted
gnome-common
gtkmm3
gettext
polkit
yelp-tools - required if help documentation is to be built
On CentOS/RHEL, these dependencies may be obtained by running the
following command as root:
yum install gnome-common yelp-tools glib2-devel gcc-c++ \
libuuid-devel parted-devel gtkmm30-devel make \
polkit-devel gettext-devel
On Debian or Ubuntu, these dependencies may be obtained by running
one of the following commands:
Either;
sudo apt build-dep gparted
Or;
sudo apt install build-essential gnome-common yelp-tools \
libglib2.0-dev uuid-dev libparted-dev \
libgtkmm-3.0-dev
On Fedora, these dependencies may be obtained by running the
following command as root:
dnf install gnome-common yelp-tools glib2-devel gcc-c++ \
libuuid-devel parted-devel gtkmm30-devel make \
polkit-devel gettext-devel
On openSUSE, these dependencies may be obtained by running the
following commands:
sudo zypper install gnome-common gcc-c++ libuuid-devel \
parted-devel gtkmm3-devel make polkit-devel
Again, build GParted with the default configuration and install into
the default location of /usr/local using:
./configure
make
sudo make install
If you wish to build this package without the help documentation use
the --disable-doc flag:
E.g., ./configure --disable-doc
If you wish to build this package to use native libparted /dev/mapper
dmraid support use the --enable-libparted-dmraid flag:
E.g., ./configure --enable-libparted-dmraid
If you wish to build this package with online resize support then
the following is required:
a) Linux kernel version 3.6 or higher.
b) Libparted with online resize support. Either:
i) Libparted version 3.2 or later which includes online
resize support as standard. In this case GParted is
automatically built with online resize support.
ii) Online resize support back ported into an earlier version
of libparted. This is only known to be included in Debian
and derived distributions with parted version 2.3-14 and
higher. In this case online resize support must be
specifically enabled with the --enable-online-resize flag:
E.g., ./configure --enable-online-resize
If you wish to build GParted to allow it to use xhost to grant root
access to the X11 server use the --enable-xhost-root flag. This is
required to allow GParted to display under Wayland.
./configure --enable-xhost-root
Please note that more than one configure flag can be used:
E.g., ./configure --disable-doc --enable-libparted-dmraid
The INSTALL file contains further GNU installation instructions.
c. Installing polkit's Action File
GParted needs to run as root therefore it needs a graphical switch
user program to allow normal users to run it. Most desktops now use
polkit as their preferred authorisation mechanism. Therefore
./configure looks for polkit's pkexec as the first choice with
fallbacks in order being: gksudo, gksu, kdesudo and finally xdg-su.
Also polkit reads action files only from directory
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions. Therefore it is likely that a polkit
action file will need to be installed into this directory.
To determine if polkit's pkexec program is being used as the
graphical privilege escalation program examine the output from
./configure. These lines report that pkexec is being used:
checking for pkexec >= 0.102... 0.112 found
Where as either of these lines of ./configure output report that
pkexec is not being used because either it was too old a version or
it was not found:
checking for pkexec >= 0.102... 0.96 found
checking for pkexec >= 0.102... not found
When GParted is configured with prefix /usr (using command
./configure --prefix=/usr) then make install will automatically
install the polkit action file into the correct directory and no
further steps need to be taken. This is typically the case for
distribution builds of GParted.
However when GParted is configured with the default prefix of
/usr/local, or any prefix other than /usr, then the polkit action
file has to be manually installed into the correct directory. Also
it should have a unique file name to avoid overwriting the action
file from the distribution's package. Install the polkit action file
with a unique name including an extra ".local" in the name:
sudo install -m 644 org.gnome.gparted.policy \
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.gnome.gparted.local.policy
d. Building using a Specific (lib)parted Version
1) Download the parted version you wish to use (e.g., 3.2) from:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/
2) Build and install parted.
Extract parted tarball, configure, make, and sudo make install.
Note that by default this will install into /usr/local.
3) Set environment variables to inform the GParted build system to
use libparted from /usr/local:
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib
export LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/lib
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
4) Build gparted using steps listed above in "Building from Source".
Note that when you run ./configure you should see the specific
version of parted listed in the check for libparted >= 1.7.1.
You will also see the libparted version listed when running
gparted from the command line.
DIRECTORIES
------------
data - contains desktop icons
doc - contains manual page documentation
help - contains GParted Manual and international translations
include - contains source header files
lib/gtest
- contains Google Test C++ test framework libraries
m4 - contains macro files
po - contains international language translations
src - contains C++ source code
DISTRIBUTION NOTES
------------------
GParted uses GNU libparted to detect and manipulate devices and
partition tables. The blkid command is also required to detect those
file systems which libparted doesn't detect. (The blkid command should
be considered a mandatory requirement).
GParted also queries and manipulates the file systems within those
devices and partitions. When available, it uses each file system's
specific commands. The following optional file system specific packages
provide this support:
btrfs-progs / btrfs-tools
e2fsprogs
exfatprogs
f2fs-tools
dosfstools
mtools - required to read and write FAT16/32 volume labels
and UUIDs
hfsutils
hfsprogs
jfsutils
nilfs-utils / nilfs-tools
ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs
reiser4progs
reiserfsprogs / reiserfs-utils / reiserfs
udftools
util-linux - required to create and check MINIX file systems
xfsprogs, xfsdump
For dmraid support, the following packages are required:
dmsetup - removes /dev/mapper entries
dmraid - lists dmraid devices and creates /dev/mapper
entries
For GNU/Linux distribution dmraid support, the following are required:
- kernel built with Device Mapping and Mirroring built. From
menuconfig, it is under Device Drivers -> <something> (RAID & LVM).
- dmraid drive arrays activated on boot (e.g., dmraid -ay).
For LVM2 Physical Volume support the following command is required:
lvm - LVM2 administration tool
And device-mapper support in the kernel.
For accurate detection and reporting of Linux Software RAID Arrays the
following command is required:
mdadm - SWRaid administration tool
For LUKS support the following commands are required:
cryptsetup - LUKS volume administration tool
dmsetup - Device-mapper administration tool
For attempt data rescue for lost partitions, the following package
is required:
gpart - guesses PC-type hard disk partitions
Several more commands are optionally used by GParted if found on the
system. These commands include:
blkid - [mandatory requirement] used to detect file systems
libparted doesn't, read UUIDs and volume labels
hdparm - used to query disk device serial numbers
udisks - used to prevent automounting of file systems
{filemanager} - used in attempt data rescue to display discovered
file systems. (e.g., nautilus, pcmanfm)
hal-lock - used to prevent automounting of file systems
pkexec - used to acquire root privileges in gparted shell
script wrapper, but only if available when gparted
source is configured
gksudo - alternatively used to acquire root privileges in
gparted shell script wrapper, second choice if
available when gparted source is configured
gksu - alternatively used to acquire root privileges in
gparted shell script wrapper, third choice if
available when gparted source is configured
kdesudo - alternatively used to acquire root privileges in
gparted shell script wrapper, fourth choice if
available when gparted source is configured
xdg-su - alternatively used to acquire root privileges in
gparted shell script wrapper, last choice if
available when gparted source is configured
udevadm - used in dmraid to query udev name
yelp - used to display help manual
(requires gvfs to be able to launch yelp)
xhost - used to grant root access to the X11 server, only
when configured to do so