[TriLUG] Migrating Fedora Core 3 to Ubuntu - ext3 problems

[Kevin Otte]

Thought I'd throw this out here just in case any of you get the urge to
throw the hat of red to the wind and try out a Debian based distro instead.

It seems that Fedora Core uses some extensions to ext3 that most normal
distros cannot understand.  I encountered this a couple months ago in
Debian, just this evening in Ubuntu, and in searching for the solution found
a Mandrake user with a similar tale of woe.

When trying to run e2fsck prior to mounting the filesystem, I was greeted
with the following:

e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
e2fsck: Filesystem has unsupported feature(s) (/dev/VolGroup00/data)
e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!

Being the long time TriLUGer that I am, my first instinct was to consult the
oracle of Google.  I read about the Mandrake guy telling of problems, but
the flags he reported weren't there.

I decided to compare the Fedora filesystem's features with those of a
filesystem created by Ubuntu by using "tune2fs -l /dev/VolGroup00/data".  It
turns out, there were two flags present on the FC3 filesystem that weren't
there on the Ubuntu version: large_file and resize_inode.

I removed the both of them thusly:
$ debugfs -w /dev/VolGroup00/data
debugfs: features ^large_file
debugfs: features ^resize_inode
debugfs: quit

Lo and behold, the e2fsck passed and the filesystem mounted.

I hope this is of some help to some poor soul on this list, or anyone who
might happen across it in a Google search.

All the best,

Kevin Otte, N8VNR
nivex at nivex.net
http://www.nivex.net/

-=-

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 
-- George Santayana

"It seems no one reads Santayana anymore."
-- Cdr. Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5