Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 3 System Administration Manual page 19

Chapter 1. The ext3 File System 3
Then mount the partition again as ext2 file system by typing:
mount -t ext2 /dev/hdb1 /mount/point
In the above command, replace /mount/point with the mount point of the partition.
Next, remove the file at the root level of the partition by changing to the directory where it
.journal
is mounted and typing:
rm -f .journal
You now have an ext2 partition.
If you permanently change the partition to ext2, remember to update the file.
/etc/fstab