NAME¶

growlight - Block device and filesystem editor

SYNOPSIS¶

growlight [-h|--help] [-i|--import] [-v|--verbose] [-V|--version] [--disphelp] [-t path|--target=path]

DESCRIPTION¶

growlight detects and describes disk pools, block devices, partition tables, and partitions. It can partition devices, manipulate ZFS, MD, DM, LVM and hardware RAID virtual devices, and prepare an fstab file for using the devices to boot or in a chroot, and is fully aware of variable sector sizes, GPT, and UEFI. growlight facilitates use of UUID/WWN- and HBA-based identification of block devices.

This page describes the fullscreen notcurses(3notcurses) implementation. Consult growlight-readline(8) for a line-oriented readline(3) variant.

OPTIONS¶

-h|--help: Print a brief usage summary, and exit.

-i|--import: Attempt to assemble aggregates (zpools, MD devices, etc) based on block device scans at startup.

-v|--verbose: Be more verbose.

-V|--version: Print version information and exit.

--disphelp: Display the help subdisplay upon startup.

--notroot: Force growlight to start without necessary privileges (it will usually refuse to start).

-t path|--target=path: Run in system installation mode, using path as the temporary mountpoint for the target's root filesystem. "map" commands will populate the hierarchy rooted at this mountpoint. System installation mode can also be entered at run time with the "target" command. The "map" command will not result in active mounts unless growlight is operating in system installation mode (they will merely be used to construct target fstab output). Once system installation mode is entered, growlight will return 0 only as a result of a successful invocation of the "target finalize" command. path must exist at the time of its specification.

USAGE¶

Press 'H' or 'F1' to toggle a help display. This display lists all available commands; commands which don't make sense at the moment are grayed out. Most of these commands are also available from the menu at the top of the screen. Press 'Alt' plus the underlined shortcut key to open a section of the menu, or click on it with a mouse.

Press 'q' to exit the program.

The display is hierarchal, with block devices being collected under their respective storage adapters. In addition to various physical adapters, a "virtual" adapter is provided for e.g. aggregated devices. Move among the adapters with Page Up and Page Down. Move among the block devices of an adapter with up and down; move among the partitions of a block device with left and right. Vi keys ('h'/'j'/'k'/'l') are also supported. Search with '/'; this search will be applied to all metadata.

The 'G'rowlight menu allows toggling various subscreens, including the help, recent diagnostics, mount points, and a details view. Only one subscreen can be up at a time.

The 'B'lockdevs menu allows you to 'm'ake a partition table (only if the selected block device doesn't already have one), 'r'emove a partition table (assuming one is present), 'W'ipe a Master Boot Record (overwriting it with zeroes), perform a 'B'ad block check, cre'A'te a new aggregate block device (e.g. an mdadm array or ZFS zpool), modify an existing aggregate with 'z', unbind an aggregate with 'Z', or set u'p' a loop device.

The 'P'artitions menu allows you to make a 'n'ew partition (in empty, unallocated space, on a block device with an existing partition table), 'd'elete a partition, 's'et partition attributes, 'M'ake a filesystem, 'F'sck a filesystem, 'w'ipe a filesystem, name a filesystem 'L'abel or name, set a filesystem's 'U'uid, m'o'unt a filesystem, or unm'O'unt a filesystem. Most of these latter commands can also be applied to swap devices.

When running in system installation mode (see --target above), the following commands are also supported:

•

moun't' target

•

unmoun'T' target

•

finalize UEFI with '*'

•

finalize BIOS with '#'

•

finalize fstab with '@'

BUGS¶

Pedantic collections of ambiguous identifiers (for instance, if a label equals another device's /dev/ name) will lead to questionable results. This ought be fixed.

SEE ALSO¶

mount (2), swapoff (2), swapon (2), umount (2), libblkid (3), notcurses (3), fstab (5), proc (5), inotify (7), udev (7), blkid(8),, dmraid(8), dmsetup (8), growlight-readline(8), grub-install (8), grub-mkdevicemap (8), hdparm (8), losetup (8), lsblk (8), mdadm (8), mkfs (8), mount (8), parted (8), sfdisk (8), umount (8), zfs (8), zpool (8)

AUTHORS¶

nick black nickblack@linux.com.