Convert Linux ext3 from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8

There's supposedly no character set issues with ext3 on Linux. Bet you already guessed how it really is. Yep, there is very real problems with it.



If you ever created files on Linux ext2 or ext3 with high ascii on file and folder names you're in trouble after upgrade. Not only filenames show up incorrectly many common Linux tools fail to even open such files. To make it even funnier officially this problem does not exist. Since this problem, which is fairly common according to quick google search, "doesn't exist" it's not possible to specify character set when mounting ext2/ext3.

Solution is to mount such filesystem normally and have broken filenames. Then fix them using "convmv". It's present on at least Ubuntu 12.04 repository.

Usage: convmv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 -r --notest /mnt/oldfs