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Re: Can I convert an ext2 fs to Resierfs?



    
Stan Brown wrote:

>Without reformating it? While it's mounted?

unfortunately, no. ReiserFS is way too different from ext2fs. Ext2fs
(as well as its progeny ext3fs) is an inode (information node) based
filesystem. Inode based filesystems store pertinent file data in (as
expected) inodes, and has been around quite a very long time since
the days of AT&T Unix. Ext3 is just Ext2 with journalling thus its
backward and forward compatible with ext2. Other examples of inode-
based filesystems would be XFS, NTFS(?- I ain't sure about this),
and BSD's UFS.

ReiserFS is an example of a radical filesystem based on fast-balanced
trees (I simply couldn't believe it at first that Hans Reiser was
able to make such a theoretical concept such as AVL-trees, wherein the
fast-balanced tree algo was derived, to work on a filesystem. I thought
back then that it's just for memory and dynamic variable stuff).
ReiserFS doesn't use inodes, so tough luck.

Reiserfsprogs won't reformat a mounted drive. And should you convert
your filesystem to reiserfs, you really need to backup your data.

Paolo Alexis Falcone

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www.edsamail.com



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