6.2. Converting to an Ext3 File System

The tune2fs allows you to convert an ext2 file system to ext3.

Note

Always use the e2fsck utility to check your file system before and after using tune2fs. A default installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses ext4 for all file systems. Before trying to convert, back up all your file systems in case any errors occur.

In addition, Red Hat recommends that you should, whenever possible, create a new ext3 file system and migrate your data to it instead of converting from ext2 to ext3.

To convert an ext2 file system to ext3, log in as root and type the following command in a terminal:

tune2fs -j block_device

where block_device contains the ext2 file system you wish to convert.

A valid block device could be one of two types of entries:

A mapped device — A logical volume in a volume group, for example, /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol02.
A static device — A traditional storage volume, for example, /dev/sdbX, where sdb is a storage device name and X is the partition number.

Issue the df command to display mounted file systems.