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Re: Mounting 2nd Partition



Dennis Dixon <dixon@dixonadvise.com> writes:
DD> The first issue, do I have a swap partition activated and mounted?
DD> When I boot I get the message "activating swap partition" but
DD> shouldn't it be in 'etc/mtab', 'proc/mounts', and 'mount -t swap'?

Swap partitions don't get "mounted" the way partitions with
filesystems do.  '/sbin/swapon -s' will list your swap partitions, and 
'free' will show you the total amount of active swap space.

DD> Are there commands that I can use to permanently activate and mount
DD> partitions without using the rescue disk? 

You need to edit the /etc/fstab file by hand.  You can just copy
existing lines and modify them, or see the fstab(5) man page for more
information.

DD> The second issue, is a separate partition (hda6) which I have
DD> allocated the vast majority of my memory space to. This clearly
DD> doesn't exist at all.  Trying to remedy this, I booted from my
DD> rescue disk, activated and mounted hda2 as root, then activated
DD> and mounted hda6 as usr2.  After exiting the rescue disk and
DD> rebooting I did have a 'usr2' directory, but it was located in
DD> hda2.

DD> When I do this, is it safe to mount hda6 as '/usr' or will this
DD> wipe out all the existing data on /usr in hda2?  (The solution is
DD> to mount hda6 as usr2, 'cp usr usr2', then rename usr2 to usr
DD> somehow?)

The latter is (almost) the right thing to do.  Make sure you use 
'cp -a' (or another tool, like tar) to move files between partitions,
preserving things like symlinks and permissions.  Mounting a different 
filesystem on /usr will hide anything else that was there before, so
you want to:

mount /dev/hda6 /usr2
(cd /usr; tar cf - .) | (cd /usr2; tar xpf -)
umount /usr2
mount /dev/hda6 /usr

(Note that I use tar here instead of cp -a.  Either should work.)
You'll now have the /dev/hda6 version visible under /usr.  If you're
convinced that this is complete and works, you can umount /usr, clean
out the /dev/hda2 version of /usr, and then re-'mount /dev/hda6
/usr'.  Also make sure you update your fstab to show that hda6 should
mount on /usr.

-- 
 _____________________________
/                             \       "Dad was reading a book called
|          David Maze         |     _Schroedinger's Kittens_.  Asexual
|         dmaze@mit.edu       |  reproduction?  Only one cat is in the box."
| http://donut.mit.edu/dmaze/ |               -- Abra Mitchell
\_____________________________/


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