Strange, gparted hangs on startup in TC10

[Rich]

Starting the program causes it to hang scanning  /dev/sda  and producing this error message:

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tc@box:~$ sudo gparted
======================
libparted : 3.2
======================

(gpartedbin:6192): glibmm-CRITICAL **:
unhandled exception (type Glib::Error) in signal handler:
domain: g_convert_error
code  : 1
what  : Invalid byte sequence in conversion input

Terminated
tc@box:~$ If I plug in a thumb drive and execute:

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sudo gparted /dev/sdf1it starts up correctly. /dev/sda  and  /dev/sdf1  are both formatted  EXT4  and look like this:

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tc@box:~$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 466 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
60801 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device  Boot StartCHS    EndCHS        StartLBA     EndLBA    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1    0,32,33     1023,254,63       2048   40962047   40960000 19.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2    1023,254,63 1023,254,63   40962048   81922047   40960000 19.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3    1023,254,63 1023,254,63   81922048  122882047   40960000 19.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4    1023,254,63 1023,254,63  122882048  976773119  853891072  407G  5 Extended
Disk /dev/sdf: 1901 MB, 1993342976 bytes, 3893248 sectors
1012 cylinders, 62 heads, 62 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device  Boot StartCHS    EndCHS        StartLBA     EndLBA    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdf1 *  0,1,1       1011,61,62          62    3890127    3890066 1899M 83 Linux
tc@box:~$
Now here's the strange part (to me at least), if I install  e2fsprogs.tcz,  gparted  finishes scanning /dev/sda  and starts correctly.

I've posted this here because I'm not certain it's a bug.

[Rich]

Found out one more piece of information. It appears to be mount related. If I first mount  /dev/sdf1  then the command:

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sudo gparted /dev/sdf1also hangs.

[Juanito]

Now here's the strange part (to me at least), if I install  e2fsprogs.tcz,  gparted  finishes scanning /dev/sda  and starts correctly.

It didn't do that previously, but I see the same problem - e2fsprogs added to the dep file until I find time to check things out.

[jazzbiker]

Hi, sorry for my two cents in your conversation.

Gparted is the front-end for parted. parted don't do anything by itself but is calling external utils.
And i had an issue with them both caused with uncorrect parted work with return messages of called utils.
To be exact i tried to resize FAT partition on external USB-hdd under some Ubuntu, probably 14.04.
Gparted hanged deadly. Then i made the same operations in parted and found that it called some binary for resize, that one failed and parted payed no attention on it.
Since then i don't use both gparted and parted.

I think putting e2fstools to dependencies is obligatory (the very right way seems fdisk and mkfs), i am afraid of what parted can do with busybox partition tools without proper interfacing external programs.

Best regards!

[Rich]

Hi Juanito
I did some checking and I think I may have found a clue. Reverting back to an older  glib2.tcz  allows  gparted  to start:

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tc@box:~$ sudo gparted
======================
libparted : 3.2
======================
Failed to execute child process "-h" (No such file or directory)
tc@box:~$The  Failed to execute  message is not fatal and repeats for each mounted partition it encounters when loading, refreshing devices,
and mounting or unmounting devices. The message is not present in my TC9 setup. I had to go back 2 versions of  glib2.tcz  to get
it to work, specifically this one as per the change log:

2017/04/22 updated 2.45.2 -> 2.50.3 (juanito)

I'm wondering if maybe  glibmm.tcz  needs to be recompiled against the newer  glib2.tcz.  The change log for  glibmm.tcz  shows
the current version as:

2017/04/23 updated 2.41.4 -> 2.50.1

One day after the working  glib2  and probably compiled against that version. The other item that makes me suspect  glibmm  is
the error message in the OP:

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(gpartedbin:6192): glibmm-CRITICAL **:
unhandled exception (type Glib::Error) in signal handler:

[Juanito]

glibmm updated, but it does not fix the problem - it does make sense for the glib and glibmm versions to match though..

I see the latest gparted uses gtk3, so I'll take a look at that - parted has not been updated for ages although there are quite a few commits in the git repo.

[Juanito]

Looking some more, parted-3.2 was released 2014/07/29 and there have been 122 commits since then.

I'm loath to use git for something that can wipe a hd, but maybe in this case it makes sense?

Edit: I compiled parted from git to test and with gparted-1.0.0 it works as expected without e2fsprogs

[Rich]

Hi Juanito

... I'm loath to use git for something that can wipe a hd, but maybe in this case it makes sense? ...

I didn't know there are issues with using git. The alternative of making  e2fsprogs  a required dependency is not unreasonable
for a program thats running on Linux.

[Juanito]

Ah - I didn’t mean using git was the problem, but rather that parted built using “git clone” would not be an official release.

[Pats]

Yday , I also found *missing atklib* or something like that problem , when I tried loading - sudo gparted - thru a terminal.

 ... I used Update option of Apps. Then I tried loading it locally  from Apps. In right pane it started showing missing deps one by one. .. I changed to - remote browse mode - , downloaded missing deps and again tried loading locally .

After all missing deps dnloads completed, Gparted icon  appeared in Menu Bar.
Clicking it , gparted started successfully. And correctly formated and partitioned the already plugged Pen Drive... actually gparted repaired one non-functional pendrive.

 ... TC version is 10.0 with Installation add-on !

[Juanito]

Since parted was so out of date, I decided to go ahead with the update - gparted and parted posted.

[Rich]

Hi Juanito
I updated my system and gparted no longer hangs. It also feels like it scans the drives quicker. I was surprised to see a gparted
icon in the menu bar. Thank you for fixing gparted.

[Rich]

Hi Pats

... Gparted icon  appeared in Menu Bar.
Clicking it , gparted started successfully. ...

Sounds like you're running as root, otherwise  gparted  wouldn't start using the icon.

[Pats]

@Rich

..Sounds like you're running as root, otherwise  gparted  wouldn't start using the icon.

you are absolutely correct to point-out that gparted not started by clicking on the Right Click Menu Entry of gparted.

 .. But I did a simple trick from TC2.5 days :
I edited the file :
/home/tc/.wmx/Applications/gparted

... and inserted word *sudo* in 2nd line. My edited gparted file looks like this :

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#!/bin/sh
exec sudo /usr/local/sbin/gparted

It would be good if the gparted ext maintainer or someone make the sudo word change in original ext itself !

[Juanito]

As has been said several times, that has been done deliberately as a safety precaution.