Bug 621488

Description of problem:
I have a single disk device, /dev/sda. /dev/sda1 is my /boot, /dev/sda2 is my /, etc. I want to create a new partition /dev/sda7 in a free unallocated space at the end of my disk.

If I use gparted to create a new partition, it creates it but reports an error:

libparted messages:
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.

The partition is created, but not seen by kernel.

When I try to format that partition to ext4 now, I receive another set of messages:

set partition type on /dev/sda7    FAILED
libparted messages:
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy).  As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.

The filesystem is not created.

I believe this problem is caused by using partprobe on a disk that currently has other locked (mounted) partitions. But it is perfectly possible to inform kernel about new/deleted partitions, you just can't use partprobe and must use addpart/delpart instead. On top of that, I'm pretty confident that gparted used to work in situations like this, it used to be possible to add new partition even on disk with other currently mounted partitions. It is not possible anymore.

I know I can boot from livecd to work around this issue, but that's not really the solution I would like to see.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
parted-2.1-8.fc13.x86_64
gparted-0.5.2-1.fc13.x86_64
pyparted-3.3-1.fc13.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot from system located somewhere on /dev/sda.
2. Try to add new partition to the same disk /dev/sda, using unallocated space is sufficient.
3. Try to format the new partition.
4. Watch it fail twice.
  
Actual results:
gparted can't be used on disks with some mounted partitions present - the most common case

Expected results:
quite the opposite

Additional info:
I tried to use parted and it reports the same error when removing partitions and kernel isn't informed neither, so I suspect it suffers from the same issues.