Sorry for the off-topic, but I've just installed CentOS 5 on my home box and I want to put the journal on another drive. I created a software RAID-1 device, /dev/md1, and formatted an ext3 file system on it. Now I want to move the journal to /dev/hda5. I've googled for this and the process appears to be:

mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 -O journal_dev /dev/hda5 mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 -J device=/dev/hda5 /dev/md1

Now, here's the fun part. I've already put data on /dev/md1. Will the above commands reformat /dev/md1? If so, is there an easy way to move the journal for /dev/md1 to a new partition?

These commands will reformat your /dev/md1 device.

I have not tried this, but I would expect the following to work.

1. Backup your data. 2. Unmount the filesystem on /dev/md1 3. Create the external journal with "mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 -O journal_dev /dev/hda5" 4. Use tune2fs to associate the external journal to your filesystem with "tune2fs -J device=/dev/hda5 /dev/md1"

HTH, Barry