whilst trying to shrink an ext3 partiton...

[Ron Simpkin]

I was trying to free some space for a new partition, the partitons were 
originally created by partiton magic 5. 

I get the same problem compiling parted static with gcc 2.96 or dynamic with 
gcc 3.2


address@hidden parted-1.6.3 # ./parted/parted /dev/hdb 
GNU Parted 1.6.3
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT 
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more 
details.

Using /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc
Information: The operating system thinks the geometry on 
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc is 2434/255/63.  Therefore, cylinder 
1024 ends at 8032.499M.
(parted) print                                                            
Disk geometry for /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 0.000-19092.937 
megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
2          0.031     94.130  primary   ext3        
1         94.131  19092.875  extended              boot, lba
5         94.162   2008.125  logical   ext3        boot
6       2008.156   9028.718  logical   ext3        
7       9028.749  10009.248  logical   ext3        
8      10009.279  10142.600  logical   linux-swap  
9      10142.631  19092.875  logical   ext3        
(parted) resize 9 10142.631 14489                                          
ext2_del_group: this should not happen anymore!

this is the relevant part of dmesg:

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 66MHz system bus speed for PIO modes
PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: Maxtor 90650U2, ATA DISK drive
hdb: ST320430A, ATA DISK drive
hdc: SAMSUNG SC-140B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 12594960 sectors (6449 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=784/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdb: 39102336 sectors (20020 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=2434/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdc: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 < hda5 > hda4
 hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 hdb7 hdb8 hdb9 > hdb2

hdparm -i /dev/hdb :

/dev/hdb:

 Model=ST320430A, FwRev=3.11, SerialNo=7BX09M4M
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=512kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=-66060037, LBA=yes, LBAsects=39102336
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 
 AdvancedPM=no
 Drive Supports : Reserved : ATA-1 ATA-2 ATA-3 ATA-4 

fdisk /dev/hdb:

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2434.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2434 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *        13      2434  19454715    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb2             1        12     96358+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb5   *        13       256   1959898+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb6           257      1151   7189056   83  Linux
/dev/hdb7          1152      1276   1004031   83  Linux
/dev/hdb8          1277      1293    136521   82  Linux swap
/dev/hdb9          1294      2434   9165051   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

This is all the information I can give atm and I really need to free up some 
space so I can implement LVM

Cheers

Ron