gpg: Signature made Thu Oct 25 00:52:57 2018 UTC
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gpg: Good signature from "Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew James Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (UKUUG) <andy.smith@ukuug.org>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (BitFolk Ltd.) <andy@bitfolk.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Linux User Groups UK) <andy@lug.org.uk>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Cernio Technology Cooperative) <andy.smith@cernio.com>" [unknown]
Hi Neil,
On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 04:17:34PM +0100, Neil Wallace wrote:
> However Dropbox are dropping support for ext3 this will be broken soon.
>
> What's my best option here.
> Migrate the entire VPS to ext4?
> Create a new (ext4) partition?
> Something else.
I don't use Dropbox but personally I would first just try editing
fstab to replace ext3 with ext4 and then see if Dropbox is happy.
This does not convert your filesystem to ext4, it only allows you to
continue using an ext3 filesystem but with the ext4 driver. Unless
you go further to convert the filesystem it will not support all the
features of an ext4 filesystem. If Dropbox checks for those features
then it might not work. If it doesn't check then it probably will
work.
If that doesn't work, what about this?
https://metabubble.net/linux/how-to-keep-using-dropbox-even-if-you-dont-use-unencrypted-ext4-workaround/
It involves creating an image file, putting an ext4 filesystem on it
and then mounting that. This has the disadvantage that it uses the
full size of the image file out of your filesystem. You could
perhaps try a sparse image, which will only take up space when it's
allocated.
If none of that was suitable then I'd boot into the rescue VM and
convert the filesystem to ext4 (after taking a backup).
Of course, if reinstalling is a matter of minutes for you then it
might make sense to take the plunge and reinstall on ext4 using
amd64 architecture.
> I note from
> https://debian-administration.org/article/643/Migrating_a_live_system_from_ext3_to_ext4_filesystem
> that it is possible to switch from ext3 to ext4 without any conversion by
> simply editing the fstab and rebooting.
This initially doesn't actually convert to ext4; all it does is make
the ext3 filesystem work through the ext4 driver.
If you wanted to try the later things it mentions about migrating to
ext4 then you will probably find it easier to do that from the
rescue VM as you can boot into it and do the fsck and tune2fs
commands against /dev/xvda1 (after taking backups).
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
