source: postlfs/filesystems/ext3.xml@ ff769b8c

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<sect1 id="postlfs-filesystems-ext3">
<sect1info>
<othername>$LastChangedBy$</othername>
<date>$Date$</date>
</sect1info>
<?dbhtml filename="ext3.html"?>
<title>Ext3</title>

<para>Ext3 is a journaling file system that is an extension to the ext2
file system. It is backward compatible with ext2 and the conversion from ext2
to ext3 is trivial.</para>

<para>You don't need to install anything to use ext3, all the required
packages are available with a bare <acronym>LFS</acronym> system.</para>

<para>When building the kernel, ensure that you have compiled in ext3
support.  If you want your root partition to be ext3, then compile the ext3 
support in the kernel, else you may compile it as a module. Recompile the 
kernel if needed.</para>

<para>Edit your <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. For each partition that you 
want to convert into ext3, edit the entry so that it looks similar to the 
following line.</para>

<screen>/dev/hd<replaceable>XX</replaceable> /mnt_point ext3 defaults 1 0</screen>

<para>In the above line, replace 
<filename>/dev/hd<replaceable>XX</replaceable></filename> by the
partition (e.g., <filename>/dev/hda2</filename>), 
<filename class="directory">/mnt_point</filename> by the mount point (e.g., 
<filename class="directory">/home</filename>). The <option>0</option> in the 
last field ensures that the partition will not be checked for 
consistency during the boot process  by the <command>checkfs</command> script. 
You may replace the <option>ext3</option> fs type in the above by
<option>auto</option> if you want to ensure that the partition is mounted 
if you accidentally skip enabling the ext3 support in the kernel.</para>

<para>For each partition that you have converted to ext3 in <filename>
/etc/fstab</filename>, enable the journal for the partition by running the 
following command.</para>

<screen><userinput role='root'><command>tune2fs -j /dev/hd<replaceable>XX</replaceable></command></userinput></screen>

<para>Remount the concerned partitions, or simply reboot if you have
recompiled the kernel to enable ext3 support.</para>

<para>More information is available at <ulink
url="http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/ext3/ext3-usage.html"/>. This
informaion is still relevant to the 2.6 kernels.</para>

</sect1>