RHEL 5's old parted didn't have the -m option. A number of commands relied on this option and thus would break on RHEL 5: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=598309 This rather large patch adds a second parsing path which allows us to parse the old text-based output (it preserves the code for parsing the output of the -m option too, since if supported, that is more accurate). Typical output from the old format looks like this: --- Model: Unknown (unknown) Disk /dev/vda: 524287999B Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 512B 524287999B 524287488B primary boot --- Tested on RHEL 5.5. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/ See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html