Re: Creating/Moving a partition

[Andrew Hately <andrew.hately@eurocontrol.be>]

"David J. Kanter" wrote:
> 
> I'd like to make a new partition for /var because I don't have enough drive
> space where /var is currently mounted (/) to run apt-get dist-upgrade.
> What's the best way of doing this? I can create a new /var partition because
> I've got plenty of available drive space, but what set-up files will I have
> to modify to make sure things go smoothly?
> 
> I assume I'll have to change fstab. But then do I have to move all contents
> of the current /var to the new /var? Could I create the new partition using
> a temporary name, move all the /var stuff to it, then rename it to /var?

Thats what I would suggest.
Stop everything you can, copy the contents and do the final swapover in one
line, just in case
# mv /var /old_var ; mv /new_var /var

Another alternative is to create a whole new, bigger, root partition, copy
everyting to that, boot it from a rescue floppy and once there 
1) make it bootable, fix up /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo
2) remove the original root partition and replace it with an enlarged
verion.
It depends what else you've got on the disk, how much time you have, etc.

Andrew