“Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!” even though number of sectors is fine

Question

I am looking at an image file which was created using dd with an SD card with Raspbian (with Qt 5.7 on it that I compiled a while ago) as input. When invoking

sudo parted raspbian_jessie_qt5.7_all_modules.img unit s print

I get

Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

I checked the partitions using fdisk using

sudo fdisk -lu rasp_jessie_qt5.7.img

with the following output

Disk rasp_jessie_qt5.7.img: 7.8 GiB, 8328838656 bytes, 16267263 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x65a3fac2

Device                 Boot  Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
rasp_jessie_qt5.7.img1        8192   131071   122880   60M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
rasp_jessie_qt5.7.img2      131072 16267263 16136192  7.7G 83 Linux

When I look at this I have 16267263 sectors as the upper limit while the FS where Rasbian resides ends at the 16267263th sector (that is at the edge of the available upper limit). The number of sectors in total is 16136192.

I can use dd with if=/dev/zeros to expand the image and then expand the Linux FS in it but 1)I'm not sure if this will fix the problem and 2). I would really like to stick to the size of the original image that is approx. 7.7GB.

Any ideas what I have overlooked and how to fix it?

Note that I have no issues writing the image to the SD card, booting my Rasbian (the SD card is 32GB in total) and working with it.

Answer 1

Your image has 16267263 sectors, but the start and end sectors count from 0, so your partition extends one sector beyond the end of the image. Since the image appears to work fine you can probably fix it by appending 512 bytes to it.

Answer 2

I had the same problem and solved it with using the same technique (using dd with if=/dev/zeros to expand the image). I post the commands just for future reference:

user@host $  sudo fdisk -l -u=sectors hdd.img
Disk hdd.img: 465.8 GiB, 500107861504 bytes, 976773167 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x8342379a

Device   Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
hdd.img1 *         2048    718847    716800  350M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
hdd.img2         718848 210434047 209715200  100G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
hdd.img3      210434048 211435519   1001472  489M 83 Linux
hdd.img4      211435520 976773167 765337648  365G 8e Linux LVM

user@host $  sudo parted hdd.img unit s print
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
Ignore/Cancel? Ignore                                                     
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
Ignore/Cancel? Ignore                                                     
Model:  (file)
Disk hdd.img: 976773167s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start       End         Size        Type     File system  Flags
 1      2048s       718847s     716800s     primary  ntfs         boot
 2      718848s     210434047s  209715200s  primary  ntfs
 3      210434048s  211435519s  1001472s    primary  ext2
 4      211435520s  976773167s  765337648s  primary               lvm

Using dd to add one 512 bytes sector:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1 >> hdd.img

afterwards parted does stop giving errors:

user@host $  sudo fdisk -lu hdd.img
Disk hdd.img: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x8342379a

Device   Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
hdd.img1 *         2048    718847    716800  350M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
hdd.img2         718848 210434047 209715200  100G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
hdd.img3      210434048 211435519   1001472  489M 83 Linux
hdd.img4      211435520 976773167 765337648  365G 8e Linux LVM

user@host $  sudo hdd.img unit s print
Model:  (file)
Disk hdd.img: 976773168s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start       End         Size        Type     File system  Flags
 1      2048s       718847s     716800s     primary  ntfs         boot
 2      718848s     210434047s  209715200s  primary  ntfs
 3      210434048s  211435519s  1001472s    primary  ext2
 4      211435520s  976773167s  765337648s  primary               lvm