Arch Linux

Allamgir

Member

Registered: 2009-06-11

Posts: 168

Switching from jfs to ext4 while preserving everything?

Currently I'm using jfs, but I'm considering switching to ext4. Is ext4 stable enough for everyday use at this point? What is the best, easiest, and most painless way to FULLY switch from jfs to ext4 (none of this "upgrade and only miss a few features" stuff like with ext3=>ext4) while preserving everything on my system (including all installed packages, config files, etc.)?

I was considering just going into thunar as root and copying and pasting everything in my root directory (except /proc and /mnt) to an external drive, then reinstalling Arch with ext4. Once I get a system with which I can connect to my external drive and copy files, I was going to overwrite everything in my root directory with the old stuff. Would that work? Is there a better solution? In a nutshell, I want to change the filesystem to ext4 without changing anything else unless necessary or beneficial.

Lastly, is there anything I should know before switching to ext4? Any warnings or what not you would like to inform me of?

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djszapi

Member

From: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Registered: 2009-06-14

Posts: 1,439

Website

Re: Switching from jfs to ext4 while preserving everything?

You can backup the data not from the online system, but from another partition/distribution, livecd. Preserve thew permission properties, copy the symlink too, etc.

EXT4:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext4

Backup:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_with_hdup
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sub … nd_restore

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Allamgir

Member

Registered: 2009-06-11

Posts: 168

Re: Switching from jfs to ext4 while preserving everything?

Thanks! Now I just found something else out about my computer: it is 64-bit capable! This give me another reason to do a full reinstall. I just have a question. If I back up my config files for things like rc.conf, xorg.conf, openbox's rc.xml and menu.xml, my xmonad.hs, etc, will all of that work fine in 64-bit as long as I install the 64-bit package? Is there anything that will not or will cause problems if I try?

And if I backed up just by transferring my config files (or even my whole / directory) to an external drive, and then I later put the config files on a new 64-bit arch install, would all the permissions and everything be ok?

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