GPARTED GTK3

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 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

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:

  Debian or Ubuntu
  ----------------
  sudo apt-get install gparted

  Fedora or CentOS/RHEL
  ---------------------
  su -
  yum install gparted

  OpenSUSE
  --------
  sudo zypper install gparted

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++
• e2fsprogs
• parted
• gnome-common
• gtkmm
• gettext
• gnome-doc-utils (required if help documentation is to be built)

On Debian or Ubuntu, these dependencies may be obtained by running one of the following commands: Either

   sudo apt-get build-dep gparted

Or

   sudo apt-get install build-essential e2fsprogs uuid uuid-dev \
                        gnome-common libparted-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev \
                        libdevmapper-dev gnome-doc-utils docbook-xml

On Fedora, you will need to run (as root)

   yum install gtkmm30-devel parted-devel e2fsprogs-devel gettext \
               'perl(XML::Parser)' desktop-file-utils libuuid-devel \
               gnome-doc-utils docbook-dtds intltool gnome-common \
               gcc-c++
   yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

On openSUSE, these dependencies may be obtained by running the following commands;

   sudo zypper install automake autoconf make gnome-common \
                       libuuid-devel parted-devel gtkmm3-devel \
                       gnome-doc-utils-devel docbook-xsl-stylesheets
   sudo zypper install -t pattern devel_c_c++

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

Scrollkeeper is needed on GNOME/Gtk 2 desktops to update the OMF catalog files to allow yelp to display the GParted help manual. On GNOME/Gtk 3 desktops scrollkeeper in not required. Use can be explicitly disabled with the --disable-scrollkeeper flag: E.g., ./configure --disable-scrollkeeper Note that the configure script will automatically disable scrollkeeper if the scrollkeeper-update command is not found.

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

• compose - contains String::ucompose() function

• 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
   f2fs-tools
   dosfstools
   mtools          - required to read and write FAT16/32 volume labels
                     and UUIDs
   hfsutils
   hfsprogs
   jfsutils
   nilfs-utils
   ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs
   reiser4progs
   reiserfsprogs / reiserfs-utils / reiserfs
   udftools
   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 -> (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
• devkit-disks 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
• udevinfo used in dmraid to query udev name
• udevadm used in dmraid to query udev name
• yelp used to display help manual
• xhost used to grant root access to the X11 server, only when configured to do so