Converting from ext2 to ext3

From CLUG Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

So you want to convert to ext3, eh?

  • First thing you do is add a journal to your partition. A command similar to this will do the trick (where XX is the partition number): 
tunefs -j /dev/hdaXX

You should now have a new journal file ( /.journal ) in your partition.

  • Update your /etc/fstab to mount the filesystem as ext3. An example would look like this: 
/dev/hda3       /home         ext3    defaults       0       0
  • If it is not your / partition, you can remount it. If it is / then you will need to reboot. 
mount -o remount,rw /home
  • Now check to see if its using ext3 by running mount: 
adrian@turtle:~ $ mount
/dev/hda2 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
adrian@turtle:~ $

We can see here that my / partition is mounted as ext3, our conversion was successful.

Note: The .journal file is created on ext3 filesystems that have been converted from ext2, if you create a new ext3 filesystem, you wont see that .journal file)

Retrieved from "http://wiki.clug.org.za/wiki/Converting_from_ext2_to_ext3"