On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 11:58:21AM -0600, Adam McDaniel wrote: > > is that even going to be possible?, I thought upgrading to ext3 required > a fresh partition. That would be cool though. Which reminds me, what exactly > are the real benifits to using ext3? > > i know i could rtfm, but im busy perl-ing in another window :) ext3 offers journalling. Which basically means that the filesystem keeps a log of transactions (only write transactions I believe) to the hard disc that is never allowed to get out of sync with the contents of the hard disc. This means that if the computer goes down without the hard discs being unmounted then all you need to do is restart, the kernel will see the dirty bit set and ext3 will simply work through the journal (= log) comparing it with the hard disc, and updating the harddisc as necessary. Thus hopefully fewer fs problems and one hell of a faster fsck. You can very easily convert ext2 to ext3 so long as ext3 is in the kernel, just do: tune2fs -j /dev/hd-whatever Then update /etc/fstab and remount (oh yeah - unmount first - though strictly not necessary). If you want to play around with the boot floppies, then you can replace the kernel on the boot floppies with one that's ext3 enabled and then use that as the install kernel. You'll need another disk with the ext3 tools on it, and the installer will probably mark the partition as ext2 (I suspect it reads it from the partition table, and as there is no partition type for ext3, it will probably call it ext2), but the kernel will realise that it's ext3 when it comes to mounting it, so there shouldn't be a problem. This should work, but it'll be a little kludgy - not a slick/smooth install at all. Mind you, the last install I did was on a computer with a trashed floppy controller, so I installed from CD - potato CDs, which don't have the module in it for my NIC, so I ended up copying a 2.4 kernel deb onto a harddisc, moving the harddisc to the new machine and installing that kernel. It worked a treat! Matthew -- Matthew Sackman Nottingham, ENGLAND --------------------------------------------------------------------- The contents of this email are intended for the indicated recipient(s) only. This may or may not be indicated in the above email as it is enormously easy to fake email addresses (see the relevant RFCs). For security reasons this email is likely to be gnupg signed. On the other hand it may not be if I forgot to do so. In any case, if you are reading this on a Windows based computer then there was no point in me doing so (provided that I remembered) as your computer is most likely being used by yourself and 2.8 other people at the same time (normally without your consent). No responsibility will be accepted by anyone for any of the contents of this email. So tough. If in doubt, go compile Mozilla. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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