Bug 1212507

Summary:	sfdisk-disk-geometry fails to display the disk geometry from the partition
Product:	[Community] Virtualization Tools	Reporter:	Hu Zhang <huzhan>
Component:	libguestfs	Assignee:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	jonathan, kzak, leiwang, ptoscano, rjones, virt-maint, wshi
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Reopened
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2025-10-17 00:10:19 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Hu Zhang 2015-04-16 14:29:19 UTC

Description of problem:
sfdisk-disk-geometry fails to display the disk geometry from the partition.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kernel-4.0.0-0.rc1.git0.1.fc22.x86_64
libguestfs-1.29.33-1.fc22.x86_64

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. guestfish -a $img
2. run
3. sfdisk-disk-geometry /dev/sda

Actual results:
libguestfs: error: sfdisk_disk_geometry: /dev/sda1: sfdisk: invalid option -- 'G'                                                                                           

Usage:                                                                                                                                                                      
 sfdisk [options] <dev> [[-N] <part>]                                                                                                                                       
 sfdisk [options] <command>
...

Expected results:
sfdisk-disk-geometry displays the disk geometry from the partition successfully.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Richard W.M. Jones 2015-04-16 14:59:30 UTC

Indeed the sfdisk -G option has disappeared in Rawhide.  So
actually this is a bug in sfdisk.

Comment 2 Karel Zak 2015-04-16 16:54:04 UTC

This is not a bug, but expected change. There is no reason to use CHS.

Comment 3 Karel Zak 2015-04-16 17:11:28 UTC

Maybe we can add --getgeo to blockdev to have command line interface to the ioctl.

Comment 4 Richard W.M. Jones 2015-04-16 17:58:25 UTC

I'm going to switch this back to libguestfs.

Obviously it's a completely useless API, and CHS has no real relevance
to anything (except maybe possibly bootloaders), but we should at least
find a way to emulate it.

Comment 5 Karel Zak 2015-04-23 10:56:12 UTC

I forgot one thing, the new sfdisk still supports 

   -g, --show-geometry

to print disk geometry as returned by kernel ioctl (so ignore my comment #3:-)

# sfdisk --show-geometry /dev/sda
/dev/sda: 29185 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track


The original sfdisk also provided 

   -G, --show-pt-geometry

to guess the geometry from partition table. This is no more supported by new sfdisk. (Note that the result from kernel and from PT is usually the same.)

Comment 7 Red Hat Bugzilla 2025-10-17 00:10:19 UTC

This product has been discontinued or is no longer tracked in Red Hat Bugzilla.

Comment 8 Alasdair Kergon 2025-10-17 12:52:13 UTC

Reopening because Virtualization Tools has not been discontinued.