Error from parted 1.6.9 when resizing ext3 partition

[Amit D. Chaudhary]

Hello,

I search the archives but could not find any answer to this. I have a 
root filesystem with ext3, kernel 2.4.25.

I wanted to resize it down by a couple of GBs, tried the default boot 
disk (parted 1.6.6) and since that did not work, tried a statically 
build parted 1.6.9 with e2fsprogs 1.35.

I run into the following error message.

No Implementation: This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout! Parted
can't resize this (yet).

address@hidden /dev/hda print
Warning: Unable to determine if partitions are mounted via /proc/mounts 
or /etc/mtab.  Make sure you don't
attempt to resize or modify mounted file systems.  (Even read-only mounted)
Ignore/Cancel? I
Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-76293.945 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
1          0.031     39.221  primary   fat16
2         39.221  20042.028  primary   ntfs
3      20042.029  55043.020  extended              lba
5      20042.060  55043.020  logical   fat32
4      55043.020  74041.765  primary   ext3        boot
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

The above output is not from the real run, but after booting into the 
main linux as the disk was ram based.

Comments, suggestions?

Thanks
Amit