Converting To An Ext3 File System; Reverting To An Ext2 File System - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 3 System Administration Manual

2
1.2. Creating an ext3 File System
After installation, it is sometimes necessary to create a new ext3 file system. For example, if you add
a new disk drive to the system, you may want to partition the drive and use the ext3 file system.
The steps for creating an ext3 file system are as follows:
1. Create the partition using
2. Format the partition with the ext3 file system using
3. Label the partition using
4. Create the mount point.
5. Add the partition to
Refer to Chapter 5 Managing Disk Storage for information on performing these steps.

1.3. Converting to an ext3 File System

The program can add a journal to an existing ext2 file system without altering the data
tune2fs
already on the partition. If the file system is already mounted while it is being transitioned, the journal
will be visible as the file
mounted, the journal will be hidden and will not appear in the file system at all.
To convert an ext2 file system to ext3, log in as root and type:
/sbin/tune2fs -j /dev/hdbX
In the above command, replace /dev/hdb with the device name and X with the partition number.
After doing this, be certain to change the partition type from ext2 to ext3 in
If you are transitioning your root file system, you will have to use an
boot. To create this, run the
type
man mkinitrd
If you fail to make this change, the system will still boot, but the file system will be mounted as ext2
instead of ext3.

1.4. Reverting to an ext2 File System

Because ext3 is relatively new, some disk utilities do not yet support it. For example, you may need
to shrink a partition with
necessary to temporarily revert a file system to ext2.
To revert a partition, you must first unmount the partition by logging in as root and typing:
umount /dev/hdbX
In the above command, replace /dev/hdb with the device name and X with the partition number. For
the remainder of this section, the sample commands will use hdb1 for these values.
Next, change the file system type to ext2 by typing the following command as root:
/sbin/tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/hdb1
Check the partition for errors by typing the following command as root:
/sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/hdb1
or
parted
.
e2label
.
/etc/fstab
in the root directory of the file system. If the file system is not
.journal
program. For information on using the
mkinitrd
. Also make sure your GRUB or LILO configuration loads the
, which does not yet support ext3. In this situation, it may be
resize2fs
.
fdisk
.
mkfs
Chapter 1. The ext3 File System
/etc/fstab
image (or RAM disk) to
initrd
mkinitrd
initrd
.
command,
.