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Thread: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

  1. #1
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    Exclamation Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    Hey,
    Is there any way of downgrading from ext4 back to ext3?

    Thanks in advice,
    Jam

  2. #2
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    Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    I believe that would involve a reformat of your disk, so you would have to back up anything you want to keep.

  3. #3
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    Hilversum, NL
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    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    Quote Originally Posted by homemadejam View Post
    Hey,
    Is there any way of downgrading from ext4 back to ext3?

    Thanks in advice,
    Jam
    If I may ask, why do you want to downgrade?

  4. #4
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    Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    Well, I've upgraded to ext4.. but I cannot boot it up.

    I have a 2nd partition which I have a 2nd copy of Ubuntu installed onto there...

    So I have instaled Grub2, and added my ext4 partiton on there.

    I still had no luck in booting it up...
    And I read somewhere that I had to add a fwe thigns into the initramfs moudles... ext4, jbd2 & crc16 (I think).

    But still no luck.
    Someone said that my placing a custom script telling it what to mount and where into scripts/local-bottom would work.. still no luck.

    I have also added things like rootfstype=ext4 into the Grub... but nope.

    So I have had enough of trying to get it to work.. I just want to be able to use it again.

    Thanks,
    Jam

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    I can mount my ext4 partition from my other spare partition... is there any way in which I can copy all my files over to my 2nd partition.. format my 1st (back to ext3) and then move all my files back?

    Thanks,
    Jam

  6. #6
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    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    The answer to your question is yes. I may be an good idea to do this soon, as I am seeing reports of data loss in the Jaunty Testing and Discussion Forum.

    Jim

  7. #7
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    Feb 2009
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    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    So can I just tar my / into one big tarfile, delete the ext4 partition, recreate it as ext3 and untar everything back? Will this be ok for all the special and device files on the root partition?

    My reason for going back to ext3 is the lack of backup tools for ext4 as I would like to use something like dump or at least partimage.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
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    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    This is what I read.
    There is also a downgrade path from ext4 to ext3, with a method to con-
    vert the extent files back to indirect mapping files. In the case that users
    prefer to go back to ext3, they can mount the ext4 file system with the
    “noextents” mount option, copy the extent-based ext4 files to new files,
    rename these over the old extents, use tunefs to clear the
    INCOMPAT_EXTENTS flag, and then remount as an ext3 file system.
    I don't understand what this means, but I would like to figure it out.
    Last edited by lvleph; March 9th, 2009 at 12:19 AM.

  9. #9
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    Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    Have you figured it out yet? Or if anyone else there, can they help?

    (Sorry to bump an ageing thread)

  10. #10
    Join Date
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    Re: Downgrading from ext4 to ext3

    What (finally) worked for me is the following:
    1. Downsize the ext4 partition.
    2. Create a new ext3 partition.
    3. Just "cp -a" everything from the old to the new one.

    The tricky part was point "1." which was suddenly working after I tried again a few weeks after my first try.

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