automated disk partitioning with sfdisk

I discovered sfdisk a few years ago (part of util-linux) and have been using it in automation scripts ever since.  sfdisk is like fdisk, but is scriptable.  So for example, to list the partitions on a disk:

[root@host]# sfdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 121601 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1          0+ 121600  121601- 976760001   83  Linux
/dev/sdc2          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sdc3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sdc4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

To list them in a dump format, suitable as input to sfdisk (for cloning, saving or for some wacky awesome script):

[root@host ]# sfdisk -d /dev/sdc# partition table of /dev/sdc
unit: sectors

/dev/sdc1 : start=       63, size=1953520002, Id=83
/dev/sdc2 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sdc3 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sdc4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

You can use that dump in a fashion like this to clone a disks’s partition map:

sfdisk -d /dev/sdc | sfdisk /dev/sdd

Or for saving it and using it later:

sfdisk -d /dev/sdc > partition.sfdisk
...
sfdisk /dev/sdc < partition.sfdisk