I got a new message from gparted and when I looked at it; it had a triangle with the message:
“There are differences between boot sector and it’s backup”. What can I do about fixing this from the command line?
Very commonly seen on NTFS partitions, but the same general issue can occur on other filesystems that maintain backup metadata.
The safest thing is to identify exactly which partition GParted is warning about before attempting a repair.
First, identify the partition: lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/mesa-2404/1839
loop1 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/gnome-46-2404/168
loop2 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/core24/2124
loop3 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/snapd/28254
loop4 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/spotify/99
loop5 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/snapd/27738
loop6 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/gtk-common-themes/1535
loop7 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/core24/1643
loop9 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/bare/5
loop10 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap
/gnome-46-2404/177
sda
├─sda1 vfat FAT32 E98E-0777 578.7M 3% /boot/efi
├─sda2 ext4 1.0 852c924b-cf0d-4731-99a1-ab10aa875780 1.2G 32% /boot
└─sda3 crypto_LU 2 45bbc442-0ce6-4248-a661-f04b21d9c42b
└─luks-45bbc442-0ce6-4248-a661-f04b21d9c42b
btrfs fedora cf0884c0-c57d-450c-ba5c-a7faab8ab3d2 891.8G 4% /home
/
zram0 swap 1 zram0 97a29c51-e8ca-4246-a926-b7626aa2f186 [SWAP
I’m not sure what I"m looking for?
Your lsblk -f output is actually very helpful.
I don’t see any NTFS partitions at all. Your disk appears to be:
sda1 → FAT32 EFI System Partition (/boot/efi)
sda2 → ext4 (/boot)
sda3 → LUKS encrypted container
containing a Btrfs filesystem for Fedora
The most likely culprit is the EFI partition (/dev/sda1), because FAT32 keeps a backup boot sector and GParted knows how to compare them.
Let’s find out exactly what GParted is complaining about. Run:
sudo fsck.fat -vn /dev/sda1
The important part is the -n flag, which means do not modify anything.
when I did that this is what I got:
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
This is mostly harmless. Differences: (offset:original/backup)
65:01/00
Not automatically fixing this.
Boot sector contents:
System ID “mkfs.fat”
Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
512 bytes per logical sector
4096 bytes per cluster
32 reserved sectors
First FAT starts at byte 16384 (sector 32)
2 FATs, 32 bit entries
614400 bytes per FAT (= 1200 sectors)
Root directory start at cluster 2 (arbitrary size)
Data area starts at byte 1245184 (sector 2432)
153290 data clusters (627875840 bytes)
63 sectors/track, 255 heads
2048 hidden sectors
1228752 sectors total
Checking for unused clusters.
Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
Automatically removing dirty bit.
Checking free cluster summary.
Leaving filesystem unchanged.
/dev/sda1: 24 files, 5144/153290 clusters
The byte at 65 = 0x41 is the dirty flag which is set when the file system is mounted. The dirty flag is not set in the back-up copy and therefore you get a difference. If you unmount the file system, the dirty flag should be cleared and the won’t be any difference.