XFs -> ext3

Guest · Guest

Hi!

I now have a working XFS gentoo system.
but im not pleased whit xfs and would like to change to ext3 OR Reiserfs.
How should I do that?
I also want to use a "Normal" vanilla source not the xfs one.
Any replay is apreicitedd!

drobbins · Posted: Fri May 17, 2002 3:20 pm Post subject:

You're going to need to back up everything and restore it on a newly-created filesystem. This isn't too hard if you have an extra hard drive; otherwise it can be a pain.
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wheatstraw · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 15 Location: Florida

I found this on www.namesys.com under the faq. I did it once successfully with slackware 8.0.

"We'd first suggest you copy everything on your regular ext2 partition to the spare partition. If the spare is smaller than your original data, compress your whole partition into a tar.gz file on the spare partition. After making sure this worked correctly and all your files are there (and/or you have a good backup!), copy the /bin, /etc, /lib and /sbin directories (plus the mkreiserfs utility) to the spare partition. This is in preparation for booting off that partition so you can reformat the original ext2 partition as reiserfs.
Next, make a boot diskette with a ReiserFS-enabled kernel on it (don't forget to run lilo on the diskette!) and make sure it works (so you won't get stuck with an unbootable system.) After booting this diskette, you should get a lilo: prompt. Enter "linux root=/dev/hd init=/bin/bash" at the lilo prompt. Your system should boot and stop at a bare bash "#" prompt.

At the prompt (now off of your spare partition), try tar ztvf to test the backup archive if you did the compression step above (just to make sure you can get at your data still.) If you're convinced that you want to go ahead with the conversion, run mkreiserfs on your original ext2 partition, ERASING ALL DATA THERE (but you have the backup of course.) Then, mount the new partition somewhere as reiserfs and cd to the mount directory. Make sure the amount of free disk space is what you expected (just as a double check), and untar your backup archive to restore everything.

At this point, your data is on ReiserFS and you should be able to rerun lilo (make sure your default kernel supports ReiserFS!) on your normal root partition to get the kernel set up again. Unmount all partitions and reboot. If everything goes as planned, Linux should say "VFS: Mounted root ... as reiserfs" at some point, and you should be all set. If the system doesn't boot, etc. you have your backup diskette and can just boot off the spare partition to fix things. Make sure you have the right ReiserFS-enabled kernel installed beforehand and all configuration files (especially lilo.conf) are up to date."

Good Luck!

Guest · Posted: Sat May 18, 2002 10:47 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the replays!

dek · l33t Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 657 Location: Germany

I decided to use xfs with gentoo. Had some bad experience using ext3 with Mandrake.. I'm quite happy with xfs so far (using gentoo only a few days). What problems do you have with xfs ?

btw: Do the gentoo 2.4.19 sources support xfs ? I use the 2.4.18-xfs kernel right now. I'm missing support for my hauppauge wintv. Is bt848 in 2.4.19 ?

cya
dek

mglauche · Posted: Mon May 20, 2002 7:21 am Post subject:

i'm also a happy XFS user right now, had some trouble with it in the past, due of the old/special kernel.

But now XFS is included in the latest gentoo kernel, and nearly everything is allright

Running 2.4.19-gentoo-r5 for quite a while now, the only complain i have is that the videodev patches are not the most current ones

if you have problems with xfs-sources, give the latest gentoo-sources a try.