Parted 'incompatible feature'

[Robert]

Robert Locke wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 22:46, Robert wrote:
> 
>>>I do not know if this is related, but perhaps the following bugzilla
>>>report applies:
>>>
>>>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=90894
>>>
>>>This has been continuing into RHEL3 and FC1 last I checked.  Not sure
>>>about FC2, but some interesting comments that may apply...
>>>
>>>--Rob
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Thanks for the reply and the bugzilla URL.  They sure sound related to 
>>me.  My new question is whether or not anyone has successfully attacked 
>>  one of the affected partitions with Partition Magic.
>>
> 
> 
> Last I tried, PartitionMagic 8.01 trashed the RHEL3 installed partition
> I had - it was time for the backup tape.....  At least, parted told me
> it did not like the partition, PM hosed it up.
> 
> But, of course, YMMV....
> 
> --Rob
> 
> 

It is now after the fact. All valuable data on the partition I was 
interested in resizing has been saved, the drive fdisk'ed and mke2fs'ed 
and the blank partition WAS untouchable by either parted or 
PartitionMagic.  After reading the following, I did another mke2fs on 
each of the ext3 partitions on that drive using the -O none option and 
the result is, as Jonathan found, partitions that contain many more 
super blocks but which are parted-friendly. (PM8 also likes them).
Like this:

[root at mavis root]# mke2fs  -j -O none /dev/hdb2

Until libparted is fixed to deal with the different structure, I'll 
happily sacrifice storage space for compatibility & flexibility.

Thanks again to those who replied.


> Subject:
> Parted 1.6.11 croaks when 'sparse_super' is set?
> From:
> Jonathan D Reed <jdreed at MIT.EDU>
> Date:
> Wed, 19 May 2004 17:56:20 -0400
> CC:
> jdreed at MIT.EDU
> Newsgroups:
> gmane.comp.gnu.parted.bugs
> 
> (N.B. While I saw the effect of this bug reported in other messages, I
> didn't see one that actually tracked it down to sparse_super -
> apologies if I missed one.)
> 
> Parted appears to not be able to deal with ext2 filesystems that have
> sparse_super set.  I first noticed this when running parted (and
> qtparted) from the SystemRescueCD (http://sysresccd.org).  I
> downloaded 1.6.11 and built it to confirm that the bug was still
> present in the latest version.  Here's an example of what happens:
> 
> 0) Make sure partition isn't mounted:
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# mount | grep -i hda7
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# grep -i hda7 /proc/mounts 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu#
> 
> 1) infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/mke2fs /dev/hda7
> 
> [completes correctly, for the sake of brevity, I'll just list the
> superblock backup]
> 
> Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
>         32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208
> 
> 2) Just for fun, let's make sure it's ok:
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/e2fsck /dev/hda7
> e2fsck 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)
> /dev/hda7: clean, 11/1596224 files, 50103/3190902 blocks
> 
> 3) It is, now we'll run parted check on it:
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# parted /dev/hda check 7
> No Implementation: This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout!  Parted can't resize
> this (yet).
> 
> 4) Now we'll recreate the same filesystem, this time with no special
>    options (suitable for mounting on pre-Linux 2.2 systems)
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/mke2fs -O none /dev/hda7
> 
> [success, this time creating many more superblock backups]
> 
> 5) Again, let's check it:
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/e2fsck /dev/hda7
> e2fsck 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)
> /dev/hda7: clean, 11/1596224 files, 50279/3190902 blocks
> 
> 6) It's good.  Run parted on it:
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# parted /dev/hda check 7
> Information: The ext2 filesystem passed a basic check.  For a more
> comprehensive check, use the e2fsck program.
> 
> 7) OK, now it works.  Just to confirm it's sparse_super that's
>    breaking things, we'll do it one more time.  mke2fs by default will
>    enable "filetype" and "sparse_super" if no options are specified.
>    So we'll enable filetype, and disable sparse_super.
> 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/mke2fs /dev/hda7 -O filetype,^sparse_super 
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# /sbin/e2fsck /dev/hda7
> e2fsck 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)
> /dev/hda7: clean, 11/1596224 files, 50279/3190902 blocks
> infinite-loop.mit.edu# parted /dev/hda check 7
> Information: The ext2 filesystem passed a basic check.  For a more comprehensive check, use
> the e2fsck program.
> 
> 
> So, for some reason, parted is croaking when it encounters filesystems
> with sparse superblocks.  This is unfortunate, as it prevents users
> from resizing partitions that are large enough to merit
> sparse_superblocks.
> 
> I was able to reproduce this behavior on 3 machines, one running
> Gentoo with a 2.4.26 kernel, one running RedHat 9 with a 2.4.20 kernel
> (2.4.20-30.9), and one running RedHat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (Update 2)
> with a 2.4.21 kernel (2.4.21-15.EL).
> 
> Oh, and just for kicks, my partition table:
> 
> Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-38172.750 megabytes
> Disk label type: msdos
> Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
> 1          0.031     47.065  primary   ext3        
> 2         47.065  10048.469  primary   fat32       boot, lba
> 3      10048.469  10566.188  primary   linux-swap  
> 4      10566.189  38170.063  extended              
> 5      10566.220  25572.216  logical   ext3        
> 6      25572.248  25705.568  logical   ext2        
> 7      25705.600  38170.063  logical   ext2        
> 
> But all 3 machines had different partition tables.
> 
> -Jon
> 
> --------
> Jonathan Reed
> jdreed at mit.edu



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