gparted crashes when trying to resize fat32 partition on live USB

[Hopungo Semi-bit]

I used 32GB Transcend DataTraveler USB flash. Deleted persistence file and tried to resize partition in Gparted. It crashed when applying changes. The console output was:
*** Error in `/usr/sbin/gpartedbin': malloc(): smallbin double linked list corrupted: 0x0000000000b13160 ***
Aborted (core dumped)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: gparted 0.18.0-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Apr 28 15:41:30 2014
SourcePackage: gparted
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Aapo Rantalainen (aapo-rantalainen)]

I encountered the same with external fat32 disk.

I tried it couple of times and got one more error:
gpartedbin: malloc.c:3695: _int_malloc: Assertion `(unsigned long) (size) >= (unsigned long) (nb)' failed.

----
I tested upstream gparted from git (acbf08ce0c291348ba6900d440e9249f842180db), it gave different error, so I'm not sure is it affected or not. (Bad FAT: unterminated chain for \FSCK0052.REC.)

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gparted
cd gparted
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=`pw`/build
make
make install
cd build/sbin
./gparted

----

Finally I got partition shrank with:
sudo dosfsck -w -r -l -a -v -t /dev/sdc1
and using parted.

[Simon Dalley (dalley-simon)]

I've encountered parted and gparted crashing on FAT resize too.

This looks like GNU libparted bug #16338 . There is a patch for it: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2014-04/msg00013.html

gparted-0.19.0 includes this fix, and will hopefully be in utopic. It's in the latest SystemRescueCd-4.3.0 which I used without problems to shrink the FAT32 partition on my kubuntu-live on a memory stick. (This allowed me to create a separate FAT32 /work partition which is then easy to use for moving files on and off kubuntu-live.)

Who can I ask sweetly to backport gparted-0.19.0 into Trusty?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

gparted-0.19.0 does not contain that fix, since that fix is to a bug in parted, not gparted. That fix also is included in Trusty and only affected Ubuntu briefly before Trusty was released.

[Andrea Lazzarotto (Lazza) (andrea-lazzarotto)]

This happens to me on Ubuntu 15.04 as well.

[Roberto Costa (braselectron)]

It took me a day to get a Live UEFI ubuntu to work from a USB stick on my Lenovo U430 and another day to find a working solution to make a partition on the USB and make it persistent too.

Gparted got me crazy! How can I have to return to Windows just to partition a USB stick!!!

So I found a tip on a blog saying this: "it works with Ubuntu 12.04" so I downloaded a Virtualbox image, fixed UI configuration, updated and install gparted, and bingo, it worked!

Reading on the Gparted page, you can see release notes that version 0.23.0 key changes include: "Prevent UI hang when resizing FAT16/32, HFS and HFS+ file systems"...so please update repository Ubuntu team and avoid all these bug reports.

Package: gparted
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: gnome
Installed-Size: 1912
Maintainer: Phillip Susi <email address hidden>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.18.0-1
Depends: libatkmm-1.6-1 (>= 2.22.1), libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libglibmm-2.4-1c2a (>= 2.36.2), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.14.0), libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a (>= 1:2.24.0), libpangomm-1.4-1 (>= 2.27.1), libparted0debian1 (>= 2.2-1), libsigc++-2.0-0c2a (>= 2.0.2), libstdc++6 (>= 4.6), libuuid1 (>= 2.16)
Suggests: xfsprogs, reiserfsprogs, reiser4progs, jfsutils, ntfs-3g, dosfstools, yelp, kpartx, dmraid, dmsetup, gpart
Description: GNOME partition editor
 GParted uses libparted to detect and manipulate devices and partition
 tables while several (optional) filesystem tools provide support for
 filesystems not included in libparted.
Homepage: http://gparted.sourceforge.net

My Ubuntu 3.13.0-77-generic #121-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 20 10:50:42 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

Any updates on this?

[Bortnyák Roland (antivirtel)]

It's crashing with version 0.24.0-1~getdeb1, while I'd like to shrink a FAT32 SD card partition.

[Yanpas (yanpaso)]

This bug was fixed in libparted 3.2 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=764558

BUT! libparted 3.2 suffers from another bug: Bug 759916 - fat(32) resizing generates boot sector(s) with invalid jump
instruction and pseudo-random boot code