util-linux-ng 2.17

I released v2.17 this morning (CET). A few numbers about the release:

• 404 patches
• 488 files changed, 66816 insertions, 48504 deletions
• 41 developers
• 22 developers contributed first time
• 5 months

Thanks to all contributors!

Release highlights

fallocate

• this NEW COMMAND is a command line interface to fallocate Linux syscall and allows to preallocate blocks to a file.

unshare

• this NEW COMMAND is a command line interface to unshare Linux syscall and allows to run program with some namespaces unshared from parent.

wipefs

• this NEW COMMAND is based on libblkid and allows to remove filesystem or RAID signatures from a device.

libblkid

• libblkid allows to gather information about block device topology, currently supported methods are:
• ioctl - supported since kernel 2.6.32
• sysfs - supported since kernel 2.6.31
• fallback for DM, MD, LVM and EVMS on old kernels (base on code from xfsprogs/libdisk)

The topology support is mostly designed for mkfs programs or partitioning tools (already used in mkfs.xfs, mkex2fs, libparted and fdisk)

• libblkid supports partition tables parsing (currently supported are aix, bsd, dos, mac, gpt, minix, sgi, solaris, sun and unixware). This functionality is designed for mkfs programs, DeviceKits, [k]partx or so.

• libblkid API documentation is available at http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/libblkid-docs/

blockdev

• supports all new topology ioctls

fdisk

• aligns newly created partitions to minimum_io_size boundary ("minimum_io_size" is physical sector size or stripe chunk size on RAIDs).
• supports disks with alignment_offset now.

Complete ReleaseNotes:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/v2.17/v2.17-ReleaseNotes

Tarball:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/v2.17/util-linux-ng-2.17.tar.bz2