[ale] Looking for experience: ext3 filesystem on 2.2.X kernel

[Byron A Jeff]

For some reason my father's machine in New Orleans has an ext2 filesystem that
always flakes out when it isn't shut down properly. By this I mean that it 
fails the fsck on reboot and forces my totally novice user of a father to have
to log in and issue the fsck by hand.

As a counter I've lost power here at home at least 5 times in the last week.
All four of my slack boxes have rebooted and fscked fine every time.

I know the easiest and best solution is to upgrade from his Slack 7.1 to 
something current. But in fact the machine works pretty well for him and since
I'm here in Atlanta, I'm terrified at the propspect of doind a complete
installation over the phone.

Well a journaled filesystem should be more resistant to such failures and
ext3 is compatible with the existing ext2 filesystems that he has on his 
machine. So I started checking around.

It seems that 2.2 kernel development for ext3 is pretty much at a dead halt.
I may consider upgrading to a 2.4 kernel, however I wanted to take a good look
at trying to get ext3 working for a 2.2 kernel. He's currently running 2.2.13.

So I was wondering if anyone had any experience with ext3 filesystems on a
2.2.X kernel. The current ext3-0.0.7 release is targeted for 2.2.19, which
should be no problem installing.

Following the other avenue, does anyone remember any major major issues from
upgrading from 2.2 to 2.4? Has anyone done a kernel only upgrade recently?

The next time I get down there I'll upgrade his machine in toto and verify
all of his functionality. However in the meantime I wanted a stopgap until
I can get back down there to do it. 

So any suggestions of the least invasive way to get ext3 on his machine.

Your thoughts are welcome.

BAJ

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.