I have the same problem running gparted on a KDE install on my desktop, fully up to date, running the
3.2.18-pclos2.bfs kernel.
I believe the problem is with "/sbin/blkid", which gparted calls.
Logged in as root on my desktop, I temporarily moved /sbin/blkid to /sbin/o.blkid and started gparted
(the official PCLOS version), and it worked fine. I restored /sbin/blkid and ran gparted again
and it hung.
I then tried booting up the old kernel (2.6.38.8.pclos3.bfs) and blkid and gparted worked fine.
So it appears to me that something odd is going on with blkid and the 3.2.18 kernel.
I installed a different 3.2.18 kernel (the non-bfs one) and gparted hung.
In an Xterm, as root, I ran an strace blkid in both kernel instances. With the old kernel, I didn't see anything
strange. But with the new kernel, I saw this:
open("/dev/sda1", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
open("/dev/sda2", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
etc, for each of my partitions.
With the old kernel, these open's succeeded. I don't know how/why root can't open
an existing device ...
Is anyone experiencing this problem with the old kernel?
If you are experiencing this problem (with the new kernel), try temporarily mv-ing /sbin/blkid to a different
file and then run gparted and see if it works. Don't forget to restore /sbin/blkid.
Hopefully this information will give someone else some insight as to what's going on....
xr200