Ext3 users - May 2002 - Existance of .journal file

Hi,

please take my apologies if this is a FAQ but I couldn't find it
anywhere.

I do run all my machines on ext3 for quite some time. Now, by accident,
I found out that some partitions have a visible .journal file while
others do not. In fact on the two machines I checked .journal was
visible in / but not in any other directory that is a mount point for an
ext3 partition. I even tried deleting the file to see if it really is in
use, it was, I had to re-create the journal to be able to mount as ext3
again. After that the file is visible again. I also tuned another ext2
partition to ext3 and no .journal comes up. And yes, I did run a fsck
several times during this test cycle. 

Any explanation for this?

I'm running kernel 2.4.18 and use e2fsprogs 1.27.

Thanks in advance.

Michael

P.S.: Please CC me on replies.
-- 
Michael Meskes
Michael@Fam-Meskes.De
Go SF 49ers! Go Rhein Fire!
Use Debian GNU/Linux! Use PostgreSQL!

Hi,

On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 10:13:09AM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote:
 
> I do run all my machines on ext3 for quite some time. Now, by accident,
> I found out that some partitions have a visible .journal file while
> others do not. In fact on the two machines I checked .journal was
> visible in / but not in any other directory that is a mount point for an
> ext3 partition. I even tried deleting the file to see if it really is in
> use, it was, I had to re-create the journal to be able to mount as ext3
> again. After that the file is visible again. I also tuned another ext2
> partition to ext3 and no .journal comes up. And yes, I did run a fsck
> several times during this test cycle. 
> 
> Any explanation for this?
e2fsprogs can move the journal out of the way into a private, hidden
inode, but it won't do that if the filesystem is already mounted.
When e2fsck is initially run during boot, only root is mounted, so
only root's .journal stays around.

Cheers,
 Stephen