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5.2. Converting to an Ext3 File System

The tune2fs command converts an ext2 file system to ext3.

Note

A default installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses ext4 for all file systems. However, to convert ext2 to ext3, always use the e2fsck utility to check your file system before and after using tune2fs. Before trying to convert ext2 to ext3, back up all file systems in case any errors occur.
In addition, Red Hat recommends creating a new ext3 file system and migrating data to it, instead of converting from ext2 to ext3 whenever possible.
To convert an ext2 file system to ext3, log in as root and type the following command in a terminal:
# tune2fs -j block_device
block_device contains the ext2 file system to be converted.
A valid block device can 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.