summary: Is there a tool or tools folks would recommend for linux (specifically ext3) partition management other than GParted? which is failing on my disk.

details:

I need to fix the last partition in my disk (/dev/sda6), as described in this post. I thought the problem was merely that GParted had hosed the primary superblock on /dev/sda6, but fixing that has not enabled me to finish this action:

Quote Originally Posted by tlroche View Post
  1. Move /dev/sda6 [/home] to the right and shrink it. This should produce unallocated space between /dev/sda5 [swap] and /dev/sda6.
I was able to "fix" the primary superblock on /dev/sda6 by using a backup superblock (as described in the following post on that thread), but that didn't help GParted much. When I restarted it, I was pleased to see that it now showed /dev/sda6 having the desired size, followed by unallocated space. So I tried to just make the free space precede the partition, which GParted interpreted as the action

Code:
Move /dev/sda6 to the right and shrink it from 209.32 GiB to 209.32 GiB
which I applied. The good news is, GParted got farther before failing; but the bad news is, it still failed. Results from Save Details follow, with steps numbered by me:

Code:
[1] calibrate /dev/sda6  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )

path: /dev/sda6
start: 36837892
end: 475808627
size: 438970736 (209.32 GiB)

[2] check file system on /dev/sda6 for errors and (if possible) fix them  00:07:51    ( SUCCESS )
Since this had repeatedly failed previously, presumably the previous run of `e2fsck -b` silently fixed the primary superblock.

Code:
[3] shrink file system  00:00:34    ( SUCCESS )

resize2fs /dev/sda6 219484343K
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/sda6 to 54871085 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/sda6 is now 54871085 blocks long.
resize2fs 1.42-WIP (02-Jul-2011)

[4] shrink partition from 209.32 GiB to 209.32 GiB  00:00:00    ( ERROR )

old start: 36837892
old end: 475808627
old size: 438970736 (209.32 GiB)
Which strikes me as just odd: isn't "shrinking" from one size to the same @#$%^&! size a no-op? How could that possibly fail? But it did! apparently unmounting /dev/sda6, and hosing all subsequent steps in that action. So I'd now like to know,

  1. How could GParted possibly fail step 4? To "shrink partition from 209.32 GiB to 209.32 GiB" sounds like a NOP to me--am I missing something?
  2. How to get GParted over that hurdle? Or should I use another tool?