Re: errors following ext3 to ext4 conversion

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>]

On 8/27/15 1:58 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> I suspect that would fill Eric's heart with horror, but the ability to
> migrate the root file system from ext2 to ext3 while it was mounted
> (i.e., just run "tune2fs -O has_journal /dev/rootfs" and reboot) was
> something Stephen Tweedie added, so at least at one point Red Hat was
> more adventurous about what it would support in terms of file system
> upgrades without using mkfs.  :-)
> 
>     	     		       	       - Ted

Oh, it doesn't fill me with *that* much horror.  ;)

TBH, my big problem with the ext3->ext4 "migration" is that you wind
up with a mongrel filesystem which mkfs.ext4 would never create,
populated with files of varying runtime limitations and capabilities,
depending on whether they were created before or after the "migration."

Adding a journal and rebooting at least gets you to a pretty standard,
predictable, and tested result.  ;)

-Eric