XFS FIlesystem

[Nobody's Hero]

I have a file system that is ext3 on a RH9 system. I compiled a new kernel to include xfs support. I want to change the filesystem that exists from ext3 to xfs. Can I unmount it, then change fstab, and remount it as xfs? Or do I have to delete it and rebuild the filesystem as xfs?

[Claudio Cilloni]

I think you cannot do that. Copy you data somewhere, unmount and change the filesystem on that device to xfs (with a command like mkfs.xfs, I suppose. I don't know xfs), remount changing /etc/fstab and copy back the data.

hth,
Claudio

[Mark Grant]

No, you can not do that.

If you have a spare partition, or have sensibly been using LVM :) then create your xfs filesystem, copy all the data to it from your ext3 filesystem and then change /etc/fstab to mount your xfs filesystem. When you are happy, remove your ext3 fileystem

[Nobody's Hero]

Thanks,

I've never created a linux filesystem from the command line,post install. Is there a gui I can use, or a list of commands I can follow from the command line?

[Steven E. Protter]

mkfs, which works similar to newfs on HP-UX is the linux command to create the filesystem.

Thats were you want to check the man page.

SEP

[Mark Grant]

Robert,

SEP is right in the general case but some filesystems are different. For example reiserfs filesystem is "mkresierfs". I would check with the documentation for XFS.

"mkfs -F xfs" should call the right one but you never know so it's worth checking.