Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 90894
Parted can't copy new install partition.
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:31 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225 Description of problem: I have two Redhat partition, a small boot parition in hdb1 and the normal Linux system in hdb3 (hda is a DVD player). Backup strategy is to boot to the small backup parition and use parted to copy the main Linux parition to a separate disk (hdd). This worked find in Redhat 7.3. It continued to work when I reinstalled Redhat 9 in the boot partition, but it quite working when I installed Redhat 9 in the main linux partition. When it is asked to make the copy, parted complains that.... This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout! Parted can't resize this (yet) A forced e2fsck -f /dev/hdb3 reports no errors, so I'm assuming that this is an incompatibility between e2fsprogs and parted rather than a corrupted disk partition. Upgrading to parted 1.6.5 hasn't helped. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Parted 1.6.3-11 E2fsprogs 1.32-6 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Run parted and create a partition slightly larger than the main Redhat linux partition. 2. Ask to copy the main partition to the new one. Actual Results: This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout! Parted can't resize this (yet) Expected Results: It should have copied the partition Additional info:
*** Bug 104836 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 113074 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 122803 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Unfortunately, Parted's ext2 support is a reimplementation of e2fsprogs. Ideally, we should switch over to using libe2fs, etc. (which would require changes to libe2fs). I'm happy to help volunteers, but I don't have time to do this myself.
I suggest that this bug (#90894) should be marked with priority "high" rather than "normal" for the following reasons: Any ext2/ext3 filesystems created during the installation procedure of recent RedHat/Fedora Linux versions, which use the e2fsprogs for this task, cannot be resized, moved or copied anymore using parted. In other words: Parted can basically not be appplied to those partitions/filesystems anymore at all. Unfortunately, the utilities fdisk, resize2fs, etc. are not really alternatives (i.e. inconvenient to use) when you have to resize and move partitions and filesystems on a densely packed hard drive. Regards, Günther
*** Bug 128049 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I really dont have anything valuable to contribute to the resolution of this bug, but I would like to know when a resolution is found. Thanks all, Chris
*** Bug 137793 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 106657 [details] Add ext_attr support to parted I think the problem is that parted does not support the ext_attr feature used for SELinux. All the other features on my ext3 partitions are recognized by parted. This patch copies the EXT2_FEATURE_COMPAT_EXT_ATTR feature definition from e2fsprogs and adds recognition of it. I don't think there is any reason for special handling of ext_attr.
I think Parted needs special handling of ext_attr. First, Parted's check won't like it, because it will find unreferenced blocks. Second, if it moves an EA block, all the inodes need to be updated. It probably isn't very hard to fix these two problems, though.
Additional issues: When using Anaconda under Fedora Core 3 (and probably other versions), not only the above mentioned problems happen, as well as the ones mentioned in Bug 128049, but WINDOWS XP SETUP FROM THE CD STOPS WORKING. It becomes impossible to run the setup program to troubleshoot a windows installation that won't boot. If one tries to boot from the CD, setup will hang after displaying "Setup is inspecting your computer' hardware configuration". After formatting the linux partitions with redhat 9 and reinstalling FC3 without formatting the disks, all the above mentioned problems went away. (I haven't checked the parted part, but I imagine it is fixed as well). For anyone with a dual boot FC3/XP configuration, I strongly advise that you install the windows XP recovery console to allow for additional recovery options in case of trouble. (normally you would run it from the XP CD, which does not work with FC3 formatted drives)
I am working on FC2 (2.6.5-1.358), and using Partition Magic and DriveImage (referenced as PQ tools below): PQ tools works fine after initial install of the kernel, but after installation of certain RPMs, the PQ tools does not recognize the root partitions filesystem properly (Error #510; The version of the file system is not supported). I found that these RPMs introduced the ext_attr to the ext3 filesystem. Are the ext_attr needed ? I can remove the ext_attr easily the following way: #debugfs -w /dev/hdb1 debugfs: feature -ext_attr debugfs: q Do I have a risk here ? Regards Jens
Doesn't the extended attributes contain, among other things, ACL:s and SELINUX security contexts? I would think twice before deciding I to remove those things.
I'm wondering what the point of a partition editor that can't resize partitions is.
Im having this problem on redhat-release-3AS-12.3 (Fresh copy straight from installation medias) and parted-1.6.3-29.3. While trying to resize single big partition into smaller one, i get error message saying: Actual Results: No Implementation: This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout! Parted can't resize this (yet).
Mr Katz - is this bug likely to be fixed ever?
Partition Magic 8 doesn't like dir_index, resize_inode or ext_attr in FC3 ext3 partitions. They must be removed before it will allow a resize. You must disable SELINUX first. edit /etc/selinux/config, and set SELINUX=disabled Get e2fsprogs-1.37.tar.gz from sourceforge, compile and install it. then do this (in single user mode!) umount /dev/xxxx debugfs -w /dev/xxxx -R "features ^resize_inode ^dir_index ^ext_attr" e2fsck -y -f /dev/xxxx Then reboot and run Partition Magic
Just to insist on Additional Comment #16 (2005-02-07): Is this bug likely to be fixed ever? And to paraphrase Additional Comment #14 (2004-12-06): What is the point of a partition editor that can't resize partitions?
(In reply to comment #17) > Partition Magic 8 doesn't like dir_index, resize_inode or ext_attr in > FC3 ext3 partitions. They must be removed before it will allow a resize. Will removing ext_attr delete any important information stored in the attributes (i haven't changed any attributes on the filesystem in question myself)? Is it possible to enable SELinux again after resizing the partition?
hi! I just want to add that i have that not only on RedHat/Fedora, but up to now since i try to utilize that tool also on SUSE until now to v1.6.24. seems to be a general prob. not only of RH/FC --> i also interested if there is ANY chance that that'll be fixed or do i have to buy probrietary software. A friend said the russian paragon would do. Some specialist please tell us how the chances are! I'm really desperate. It's extremely rare that i start to compile some SW myselfe like i had to do with parted now to see if maybe not my distro screwed up the tool ... ciao, nico.
This is a horrible horrible bug. Many thanks to Comment #11 From J.P. Gonzalez for explaining why my Windows XP CD and my Windows XP Pro CD would not install on my computer. I was ready to throw the whole computer out the window. The Windows disks would say "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" and then I'd get a blank screen and the computer would never recover. There weren't many hints in that black screen, but I assumed the hardware was working because I was able to install Fedora Core. Fortunately a Google search found Mr. Gonzalez' comment above that Fedora Core 3 had caused the whole problem. When I installed Red Hat 9 on that drive, removing every remnant of Fedora Core 3, the Windows XP and Windows XP Pro installations worked fine. It seems this a bug in Fedora Core 3 colliding with a worse bug in Windows XP. But of course Fedora will get the blame even though Win XP is equally to blame. Please fix this problem as soon as possible. It's very horrible.
The horrible bug is a completely different bug. You probably mean #115980 or #138419 (or at least some the issues reported in the bug since people jumping on one bug). This was by caused by FC3 using a different disk geometry than Windows which confuses Windows. My impression is that the problem has been fixed in FC4 and presumably in FC5. If you have a corrupted partition, wiping the drive and repartitioning it with later Fedora versions or Windows should fix the problem.
Hi all, I have not heard anything on this bug in a while and I'm wondering if it still exists. Can one of the reporters test with rawhide? Or FC5? If the problem has been resolved, I'd like to close the bug. Thanks.
Parted 1.7.1 in FC5 or Rawhide does not have any support for ext3 filesystems using ext_attr feature. It will refuse to copy, resize, or move them with an "File system has an incompatible feature enabled." error.
I'd like to bring everyone on this bug report up to speed on where parted currently sits with regard to the original reported issue. Parted is currently at 1.8.0 which is mostly a bug fix release with some updates to support new disk label types and partition IDs on new hardware (e.g., new Macs). We [the parted team] are working on parted 2.0 while continuing the 1.x branch for bug fixes. The problem originally reported in this report is definitely a bug, but not a simple fix in libparted. Currently, all of the filesystem code in libparted was written from scratch. It does not make use of any filesystem libraries available (e2fsprogs, and so on). This puts libparted at a severe disadvantage when the filesystems introduce new features. Our decision was to rewrite the filesystem layer to use those libraries directly rather than add support as needed to parted. We can't guarantee that the latter method will work for future filesystem versions, but we can guarantee a better level of compatibility by using the libraries written by the same people that write the filesystems. Our plan for parted 2.0 will add the support necessary to fix the problem reported above. Currently the _only_ tool that can resize ext3 filesystems is resize2fs available in e2fsprogs. While annoying, you can use resize2fs to resize the filesystem and then use fdisk or parted to resize the partition boundary to match the new filesystem size. With parted 2.0, we'll be able to do this in one step.
Closing as UPSTREAM. We know about it upstream and are working on it. No point in tracking it as a RHEL or Fedora bug.
Please can you add the upstream bugzilla number so that commenters/reporters for this bug can track it, as well as any future Fedora users that encounter the bug before it is fixed.