anyone used convertfs (Bandel maybe)?

[David A. Bandel]

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On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:29:55 -0700
"Net Llama!" <netllama at linux-sxs.org> wrote:

> Has anyone used convertfs successfully to convert from ext3 to xfs?
> http://tzukanov.narod.ru/convertfs/
> 
> I setup a test box with RHEL-3.0 that installed using ext3.  I then 
> built a 2.4.25 kernel with both ext3 & xfs support.  I was able to 
> successfully convert /boot to xfs, but attempting to convert / wiped
> out 
>   a large chunk of the filesystem which caused the rest of the 
> conversion to fail, and the box is basically unbootable now.
> 
> There doesn't appear to be any documentation for convertfs, so i'm 
> guessing that i can't run it on a live system, but would instead have
> to use something like knoppix.  ANyone have any clues for me?

Well, I used it, but I'd never try this on a running filesystem.  In
theory it should work.  You can supposedly convert between any of a
number of filesystems as long as they support sparse files.  It's a
trick that I'm sure the filesystem authors never considered and would
probably warn against, but it does work (again, my experience was with a
filesystem that was not in use).  If you convert a running filesystem
and it has programs actually in use that need to be read from disk, you
could cause them to crash.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
- -- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
		Nemesis Racing Team motto
GPG key autoresponder:  mailto:david_key at pananix.com
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