Reverting to an ext2 File System

Because ext3 is relatively new, some disk utilities do not yet support it. For example, you may need
to shrink a partition with resize2fs, which does not yet support ext3. In this situation, it may be
necessary to temporarily revert a le system to ext2.
To revert a partition, you must rst unmount the partition by logging in as root and typing:
umount /dev/hdbX
In the above command, replace /dev/hdb with the device name and X with the partition number. For
the remainder of this section, the sample commands will use hdb1 for these values.
Next, change the le system type to ext2 by typing the following command as root:
/sbin/tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/hdb1
Check the partition for errors by typing the following command as root:

/sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/hdb1
Then mount the partition again as ext2 le system by typing:
mount -t ext2 /dev/hdb1 /mount/point
In the above command, replace /mount/point with the mount point of the partition.
Next, remove the .journal le at the root level of the partition by changing to the directory where it
is mounted and typing:
rm -f .journal
You now have an ext2 partition.
If you permanently change the partition to ext2, remember to update the /etc/fstab le.