Parted used to launch instantly here.
I just tried on my 64bit installation and there it took like 30s to start.
parted -sl also has that delay but never returns.
Ok, looks like I found the source of the problem. This error is caused by the presence of /dev/fd0, when there is only a floppy controller available but no floppy drive connected to it. This causes also the initial delay. strace revealed that it tries to open/read fd0 before generating any output, which causes a delay because it fails. It then goes forward and outputs the disk information and finally deadloops trying to read fd0.
You should see something like this in your
dmesg | tail output:
Code: Select all
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 1
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 7
Or when running
strace parted -sl:
Code: Select all
read(3, 0x633e00, 512) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
lseek(3, 3584, SEEK_SET) = 3584
A quick google search revealed that the problem is pretty common:
http://www.google.de/search?q=parted+ha ... utf-8&aq=t
Hey, writing this, I had parted running along and now that I'm finished - after some minutes - it stopped trying to read from fd0 and finally terminated.
So just wait like 5-10mins and it works.
Edit: I didn't post the workaround, did I.
You should check your BIOS and search for an option to disable your floppy (controller). I've found quite a few reports which confirmed it as working. (e.g.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gparted/+bug/155047)
Edit2: Seems like this was fixed with gparted by using /proc/partitions instead of (lib)parted. Maybe this is an option for the LiveCD, too. Akuna?
For reference:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351753
This is the (dead) bug report at parted:
http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin ... ticket/194
and in fact, after 5 min. it worked fine