From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.6 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020913 Description of problem: sometimes when it is made a new partition fdisk shows a message about it is necesary reboot the system for to use the new fs. And this is not TRUE!! -- [..fdisk shell...] Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot. Syncing disks. --- it is possible to use partx for to solve this trouble --partx-- /* * Given a block device and a partition table type, * try to parse the partition table, and list the * contents. Optionally add or remove partitions. * * [This is not an fdisk - adding and removing partitions * is not a change of the disk, but just telling the kernel * about presence and numbering of on-disk partitions.] * * Call: * partx [-{l|a|d}] [--type TYPE] [--nr M-N] [partition] wholedisk * where TYPE is {dos|bsd|solaris|unixware|gpt}. * * Read wholedisk and add all partitions: * partx -a wholedisk * * Subdivide a partition into slices (and delete or shrink the partition): * [Not easy: one needs the partition number of partition - * that is the last 4 or 6 bits of the minor; it can also be found * in /proc/partitions; but there is no good direct way.] * partx -a partition wholedisk * * Delete all partitions from wholedisk: * partx -d wholedisk * * Delete partitions M-N from wholedisk: * partx -d --nr M-N wholedisk * * aeb, 2000-03-21 -- sah is 42 now */ --end-- I dont know about sfdisk, but this false reboot message must be changed by other !!! more info here: http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~didi/editing-busy-partition-tables.html to Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.fdisk 2.to add one partition and :w 3.reboot? NO Additional info:
redhat 9 has the same problem, maybe the new version 2.11z is ok :-?
If you use partx, this message does not appear. When you use fdisk, this message is valid because of the way fdisk is implemented. Until fdisk's implementation changes to not require a reboot, the message will stay. I cannot say if/when fdisk's implementation will change, although I agree it would be a useful feature in the future.