User's Manual

80 Appendix A:Upgrading Your Current System
Figure A–1 Choosing Install or Upgrade
A.3 Upgrading Your Filesystem
The installation program has detected the ext2 filesystem on your Red Hat Linux system. At this time
you can choose to retain your current ext2 filesystem or migrate to the ext3 filesystem.
It is recommended, but not required, that you choose to migrate to the ext3 filesystem.
If you choose to migrate to the ext3 filesystem, existing system data will not be modified.
The following is a brief description of the ext2 and ext3 filesystems, and how they can be utilized.
•
ext2 — An ext2 filesystem supports standard Unix file types (regular files, directories, symbolic
links, etc). It provides the ability to assign long file names, up to 255 characters. Versions prior to
Red Hat Linux 7.2 used ext2 filesystems by default.
•
ext3 — The ext3 filesystem is based on the ext2 filesystem and has one main advantage — jour-
naling. Using a journaling filesystem reduces time spent recovering a filesystem after a crash as
there is no need to fsck
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the filesystem.
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The fsck application is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux filesystems.