root ext3 filesystem being mounted as ext2

[Paul Yeatman <pyeatman@ucsd.edu>]

Hi, I have a problem I've never run into before with a system: the root
partition is undesirably and inexplicably being mounted as ext2 during
bootup.  I'm using kernel 2.4.20-20.8 (sorry this happens to be a Red
Hat machine although I wish it weren't--it's outside of my control) and
all other partitions get normally mounted as ext3 as expected.  The
fstab for "/" reads, as so typical,

	LABEL=/		/	ext3	defaults	1 1

and the filesystem appears to be attempted to be mounted as ext3 but
then defers to ext2 with the following message:

	EXT2-fs warning (device ide0(3,1)): ext2_read_super: mounting
	ext3 filesystem as ext2

I've looked into this quite a bit both with trying different things
with the computer and doing searches for the above message in Google.
Neither have paid off.  I'm getting desperate.  Any help?

Paul