Gparted check and repair failed "/dev/sda has unsupported feature(s): metadata_csum e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!"

Question

Gparted shows the following warning about a partition.
9.23 GiB of unallocated space within the partition.
To grow the file system to fill the partition, select the partition and choose the menu item:
Partition --> Check
After attempting to do that check and repair operation in gparted I get the following error:

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xml:lang='en-US' lang='en-US'> GParted Details

GParted 0.25.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize

Libparted 3.2

Check and repair file system (ext4) on /dev/sdb2  00:00:00    ( ERROR )      calibrate /dev/sdb2  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )      path: /dev/sdb2 (partition)
start: 125001
end: 33681407
size: 33556407 (16.00 GiB) check file system on /dev/sdb2 for errors and (if possible) fix them  00:00:00    ( ERROR )      e2fsck -f -y -v -C 0 /dev/sdb2  00:00:00    ( ERROR )      e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
/dev/sdb2 has unsupported feature(s): metadata_csum
e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!

========================================

I used this command to install e2fsck

sudo apt-get install e2fs*

Solution

As indicated by the error message:

e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
/dev/sdb2 has unsupported feature(s): metadata_csum
e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!

the version of e2fsprogs package is too old to support the feature mentioned.

One way to use a more recent version of e2fsprogs is to boot from more recent live media such as the latest GParted Live. The latest GParted Live 0.30.0-1 includes e2fsprogs 1.43.6-1.

Comments

[Gary Ulwelling]

I read ext4 broken file system on ubuntu 14.04.4 and installed e2fsck as it suggested. I downloaded this using the comand sudo apt-get install e2fs*. However I still got the error message.

[user535733]

Related: serverfault.com/a/82837

[Quidam]

That's not a surprise that this question is a duplicate, it's because the other question doesn't have a clear, explanatory title.

[Gary Ulwelling]

Why does sudo apt-get install e2fsprogs not upgrade e2fsprogs to the latest version?

[Curtis Gedak]

In order to improve stabililty many distros including Ubuntu leave packages at the same version used when the distro version (e.g., 16.04) was released. Only security fixes are applied. Typically new functionality available with newer versions of packages (e.g., e2fsprogs) is not introduced. For newer package versions with new features you normally need to upgrade to a newer distro release (e.g., 17.10).

[David Foerster]

@GaryUlwelling: Could you please open a new question if you have a new or follow-up question? The comment section is not suitable or meant for new questions or extended discussion. You’re welcome to send me a comment with a notification to draw my attention to it. Thanks.

[gtux]

@GaryUlwelling I replaced all occurrences of xenial to bionic in /etc/apt/sources.list and then did a sudo apt update && sudo apt install e2fsprogs and that made it work for me.

[Quidam]

I will use Gparted live version, but I'd like to find a way to fix it outside of this. I can't install a newer version, as Synaptics doesn't show newer versions, and it's impossible to add the ppa without errors.@David Foerster It's really related to this question.