Can't grow ext4 partition with GParted running from USB

I guess the system that made the filesystem had a newer version of Linux (which includes the code for the filesystems) than Trisquel 8. Try from a live GNU/Linux system that is more recent (unfortunately, that cannot be Trisquel, until an ISO for Trisquel 9 is released).

You have here a guide to remove unsupported feature (metadata_csum) from
a mounted partition, booting from affected OS:
https://wiki.openvz.org/Installation_on_Debian_9

After this, you'll can use Trisquel 8 for desired actions over this
modern Ext4 partition.

El 13/5/19 a les 13:25, name at domain ha escrit:
> I have been using GParted to try to resize the primary root partition
> (ext4) on Bishop (my 32-bit laptop), increasing it by about 2GB into
> free space to the right of it (as visualized by GParted). I've tried it
> with a Flidas live USB and with a Flidas system I installed to a USB. In
> both cases it failed.
>
> Here is the full error message from GParted (from the installed system):
>
>> begins
>
> GParted 0.25.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize
>
> Libparted 3.2
> Grow /dev/sda1 from 13.97 GiB to 15.88 GiB  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
>         
> calibrate /dev/sda1  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
>         
> path: /dev/sda1 (partition)
> start: 2048
> end: 29296639
> size: 29294592 (13.97 GiB)
> check file system on /dev/sda1 for errors and (if possible) fix them 
> 00:00:00    ( ERROR )
>         
> e2fsck -f -y -v -C 0 /dev/sda1  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
>         
> e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
> /dev/sda1 has unsupported feature(s): metadata_csum
> e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!
>
>> ends
>
> Any suggestions?

As suggested by the output: You need a newer version of e2fsck.

If you were using a Live media of Trisquel, try to download its deb package from Debian's main (libre) repository, either testing or unstable, and then use # dpkg -i to install it. Hopefully you don't need to update its dependencies first.

Unfortunately, most popular specialist distributions such as GParted Live and Parted Magic have non-free firmware, so I don't encourage you to use them, unless you could find a deblobbed (liberated) version.

Magic Banana:
> guess the system that made the filesystem had a newer version of Linux (which includes the code for the filesystems) than Trisquel 8.

Nope. The system that made the filesystem was either a Trisquel 8 boot USB, or maybe even a Trisquel 7 one.

> Try from a live GNU/Linux system that is more recent

I suppose this is as good a reason as any to do a test run of the newly released Trisquel 9 beta ;)

Narcis Garcia:
> You have here a guide to remove unsupported feature (metadata_csum) from
a mounted partition

Thanks for the link, but what is "metadata_csum" and if I remove it, what are the potential consequences for my ext4 file system?

nadebula.1984:
> As suggested by the output: You need a newer version of e2fsck.

I've tried it from an installed system I installed to a USB instead of hard drive as an experiment. I ran apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade on it and made sure it was fully up-to-date before I tried resizing with GParted.

So a) if a newer version of e2fsck is required it's not yet in the Trisquel 8 repos and b) why would such a new version be required to resize a partition made with a Trisquel 8 boot USB? It seems like there is something else going on here and that output is just guessing.