GNOME / Gparted
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-get 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 intltool 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 intltool gcc-c++
libuuid-devel parted-devel gtkmm30-devel make
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 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 intltool gcc-c++
libuuid-devel parted-devel gtkmm30-devel make
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
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
-
Download the parted version you wish to use (e.g., 3.2) from:
-
Build and install parted.
Extract parted tarball, configure, make, and sudo make install. Note that by default this will install into /usr/local.
-
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
-
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 -> (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 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