PartitionMagic 8 error with mke2fs -j (ext3)

[illvzn]

I made a /, and /boot partition prior to the gentoo install in partition magic 8 and I was instructed to issue the following command on my partitions during the gentoo install:

(mke2fs -j /dev/hde5 and mke2fs -j /dev/hde6)
for setting up an ext3 file system

I did this just to make sure they were setup correctly. Now I go back into partition magic in windows and partition magic shows my /, and /boot partitions to be ext3 but when I try to manipulate them like add free space or something it says invalid file system. It also shows them to be completely full which they are not.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Rewriting my partition table is not an option. Maybe reinstalling partition magic? Another thing I was thinking of was maybe converting the ext3 partitions to ext2 then back to ext3 if that won't cause any akward effects and no dataloss. It could possibly jump start partition magic 8 back into operation. I don't know how to do this though.

[li1_getoo]

i don't use partition magic , but i think is better to handle linux partition with gentoo install cdrom or floppy .

[masseya]

Partition Magic and other windows programs of it's like have always given me trouble with my drives. I now try to keep a few GB of space on each drive completely unpartitioned so that if I have to I can make a new partition and store some data while I re-do all my other partitions.

As for your current predicament, I would recommend not using Partition Magic to resize linux drives. I've only been able to get that to work once on ext2, which is quite old now. The question is do you need to make them smaller or larger? Larger is easy because you can make your windows partitions smaller with Partition Magic no problem and then find a linux utility to make the linux partitions larger. The other way isn't as easy, but you would want to try and find a linux utility that will allow you to shrink your partitions, and I have had trouble going that direction.
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[stubby]

I had a problem having partition magic 8 resize the ext3 partitions created under gentoo 1.4.

I then tried to create a ext3 partiion under partition magic 8, and then use it under gentoo. It stated some feature bit was not set (or was set, but was a version 0), and prlomptly "fixed" it. I would suspect, this is part of the issue. I wish PQ Magic 8 would get a patch. Being able to resize linux partions would be great!

[li1_getoo]

hmmm m try this

[BlackBart]

i read somewhere that you can disable the journal (making it ext2) then run Partition magic then reenable the journal

[barry]

The ext3 filesystems created with the version of mke2fs in Gentoo seems to have new features. Old versions of fsck complain about Gentoo's ext3 partitions while are fine with other distributions'. I noticed that Lindows won't even boot with a Gentoo ext3 partition present on the system.