Gparted LiveCD stalls searching for partitions
 

Gparted LiveCD version 0.6.3-3. boots and loads GUI, then searches endlessly for partitions. No luck running it from command line either. Dell laptop set up to dual boot, Windows XP/PCLinuxOS. I want to shrink the Linux Root partition to give more space to the Home, but not having any luck. Suggestions please?

That's baffling. If your CD image copy was good upon burning it should do the work. Never the less, try System Rescue CD here. I have tried SystemRescueCD many times, very light, and it has tools in GUI and shell. It also runs Gparted GUI. I have saved data hard drives with it. Try.

What does query '--# fdisk -l' gives in output at the command line? At least the live cd is able to see the partitions and you are able to mount them if needed.

Hope it helps.

Gparted- couldn't find valid file system superblock...
 

...and Unable to read contents of this file system.
Tells me that ext4 needs e2fsprogs v 1.41+.

Running Parted, I get this message:
File system has an incompatible feature enabled.
Compatible features are: has_journal, dir_index, filetype, sparse_super and larg_file.
Use tune2fs or debugfs to remove features.

Debug stats finds the following filesystem features:
has_journal, ext_attr, resize-inode, dir_index, filetype, extent, flex_bg, sparse_super, large_file, huge_file, uninit_bg, dir_nlink, extra_isize

Does that give any clues as to what's going on and how to fix it? Maybe it would just be easier to reformat and re-install...

fdisk -l
 

...and fdisk -l accurately reports all partitions on the hard drive, including the Windows XP partition.

Yes, it does. Post #4 has the answer: use a newer Gparted which has support for Ext4 (because it was built against a newer version of e2fsprogs); or, use some other (newer) liveCD which has support for Ext4.

Alternately, try the link(s) provided by malekmustaq and see if one of those tools has the Ext4 support you need.
Up to you what's the "easier" thing - reformat & reinstall, or use the correct tool for what you're doing - but I see no reason that you must reinstall.

The new ubuntu 10.4.1 has gparted with ext4 capabilities

The Gparted I quoted from is on the SystemRescue CD I got yesterday from the above link in this thread. The Gparted LiveCD was made yesterday from the most recent download on Sourceforge. Puzzling. I'll try to find e2fsprogs.
Thanks for all the suggestions...

By the way, any opinions on my current distro, PCLinuxOS, compared to Debian? I had Debian dual booted for a while on an old iBook, but haven't tried the PC variety. Only removed it from the Mac because the hard drive really wasn't big enough to support both that and OS X.

That is strange. The page linked above to System Rescue CD shows that back in March they upgraded to e2fsprogs 1.41.11 so the version is high enough. However, looking more closely at the error output you gave in post #3:
If I interpret that correctly, it seems that there are a whole bunch of perhaps not-so-common features enabled in the Ext4 file system you're trying to work with. If you're building your own e2fsprogs and Gparted or sys.rescue CD from scratch (from source), run the configure script(s) (especially the one for e2f2progs) with a --help argument, and see if there are optional features that you need to enable in order to support all the options your Ext4 file system has.

Alternately, try using `tune2fs` as it says in the error message. Maybe it has a "query" sort of option whereby you can see what features are really present or needed on your file system, and disable them or make note of them for reference when checking the --help output from the configure script for e2fsprogs.

Other Alternative: Try the Ubuntu version mentioned by Larry above. Maybe it will have enough features enabled to do the job.

Good luck, and kind regards.

That is exactly what debug has reported. Sometimes using more advanced file system is an unnecessary overkill (when data integrity is not mission critical), it only creates incongruent issues with other tools like parted. You can turn OFF some of these filesystem options that you may not need meantime:

--# tune2fs -O ^large_file,^sparse_super

Let the kernel (modern kernels do) handle more than 2gig file sizes automatically when they are created.

Be sure to run e2fsck thereafter to stabilize your file system after the tune up.

If you do not really need ext4 format there is no need to use that. It only depends on your choice. As for me, I don't want to impose additional work to my laptop hard drive so I am contented to use ext2, so far so good to my standard.

Best way is to try Larry and Grapefruitgirl's advise to use Ubuntu 10.4.1 live CD, booting it up you have a ready Gparted with ext4 support. That if you should insist in using ext4.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Thanks so much for the advice. Being new to this, I didn't realize using ext4 would be problematic! I've made a liveCD of Ubuntu 10.4.1 and am about to check it out...

To tell the truth, it shouldn't be, unless you (or whomever created your Ext4 filesystem) enabled all sorts of additional (obscure?) options for no good reason.

I've been using Ext4 now since whenever Slackware64 was first available for testing and not even released yet (what was that guys - a year ago at least?) and I've never run into this situation.

Simply "using" Ext4 as a lot of folks are, isn't the problem in itself. It appears to be these additional options.

Anyhow, good luck with the Ubuntu, and of course, let us know what that says. :)

Besides, I've seen this common mistake before: It's 10.04, not 10.4. The releases, according to "System -> About Ubuntu", correspond to the year and month that the version was released. For instance, 10.04 was released on April 29, 2010 and 10.10 will be released on October 10, 2010 (in 8 days).

"10.04", in a sense, is a spin on "2010.04". It's the same thing with 8,04, 9.04, 9.10, and 10.10. Now you get the picture?

10.04.1- yes, that's what I meant... sorry! I've seen it referred to both ways but this is obviously correct, and what the iso image was labeled.

Hey miss info in earlier post, I have been using gparted on Knoppix live dvd

Thanks to all for the suggestion of Ubuntu 10.04.1. I was so impressed with it, I decided to get rid of PCLinuxOS and install Ubuntu instead. Much better documentation and resources. Install went smoothly; slight problem setting up wireless, but resolved with update download. Problem getting bluetooth mouse to work, solved (after a couple of hours of googling and fruitless command line entries) simply by a full restart. Duh...