partprobe

Many system administrators may be in the habit of re-booting their systems to make partition changes visible to the kernel. With Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® this is not usually necessary. The partprobe command, from the parted package, informs the kernel about changes to partitions. After all, anything that can help you avoid a re-boot has to be a good thing!

For example:
Code:

# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
3 0 58605120 hda
3 1 200781 hda1
3 2 2040255 hda2
3 3 56364052 hda3
8 0 1018880 sda
8 1 10224 sda1
# partprobe
# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
3 0 58605120 hda
3 1 200781 hda1
3 2 2040255 hda2
3 3 56364052 hda3
8 0 1018880 sda
8 1 10224 sda1
8 2 1008640 sda2