VERITAS Storage Foundation 4.1 Cross-Platform Data Sharing Administrator's Guide

Chapter 4, File System Considerations

Converting a File System

Use the fscdsconv command to convert the byte order of a file system.

▼ To convert the byte order of a file system

1. Determine if you must convert the file system (see “When to Convert a File System” on

page 42).

2. Determine the disk layout version of the file system that you must convert.

# fstyp -v /dev/vx/dsk/filesystem | grep version

magic a501fcf5 version 6 ctime Tue Jul 22 16:16:53 2003

Only file systems with Version 6 disk layout can be converted. If the file system has an earlier

disk layout version, convert the file system to Version 6 disk layout before proceeding (see the

vxfsconvert(1M) and vxupgrade(1M) manual pages).

3. Perform a full file system back up. Failure to do so could result in data loss or data corruption

under some failure scenarios in which restoring from the backup is required.

4. Designate a file system with free space where fscdsconv may create a file that will contain

recovery information for usage in the event of a failed conversion. Depending on the nature of

the file system to be converted, for example if it is mirrored, you may wish to designate the

recovery file to reside in a file system with the same level of failure tolerance so as to reduce

the number of failure scenarios that would require the use of the backup created in step 3.

5. Unmount the file system to be converted.

# umount mount_point