Re: Moving /var to another drive
Hi Andrew,
You need to be root on your machine to do this.
Make two partitions on the new drive using
cfdisk /dev/<drive>
Then make a filesystem on each partition. Stick to the tried-and-tested
ext2, or go for one of the new journalling ones like ext3 or reiserfs, if
you're running a kernel recent enough to support them or can compile one
that does.
E.g. mke2fs /dev/<partition>
Then mount the first partition e.g. under /mnt
mount /dev/<partition> /mnt
And transfer the data using tar:
tar cplf - -C / var | tar xvf - -C /mnt
Unmount the partition
umount /mnt
Mount the other one and do the same thing for /usr:
mount /dev/<partition>
tar cplf - -C / usr | tar xvf - -C /mnt
umount /mnt
Make sure you type the tar commands exactly as above, you don't want to go
dropping the entire copnmtents of /var or /usr (or even / if you v=get it
wrong) in the wrong place!
Edit /etc/fstab and either add lines for /usr and /var, or change existing
ones, to mount your new filesystems instead of the old ones. Here's an
example:
--- fstab excerpt ---
/dev/sdb6 /usr ext2 rw 0 2
/dev/sdb7 /var ext2 rw 0 2
--- end fstab excerpt ---
Then go to single user mode:
telinit S
Unmount /usr and /var:
umount /usr
umount /var
Mount all partitions using your new fstab:
mount -a
Check that everything is mounted where it should be:
mount
And go back to your usual runlevel (usually 2 on Debian):
telinit 2
That's it. Note that if /usr and /var were originally part of your root
filesystem, the data will still be there but the new filesystem will be
mounted on the top level directory so you won't see it. After you've
successfully transferred /usr and /var out of the root filesystem, you can
reclaim the space by going to single user mode, unmounting /usr and /var,
and doing the following:
rm -rvf /var
rm -rvf /usr
mkdir /var
mkdir /usr
Be VERY careful that /usr and /var are NOT mounted when you do this!
Also note, a space or a slash in the wrong place in either of the above
commands can wreck your system completely!
Good luck,
| George Karaolides Linustech Advanced Solutions, |
| tel: +357 22 55 61 29 86 Ifigenias Street, 3rd Floor, |
| web: www.linustech.com.cy Strovolos, Nicosia CY 2003, |
| email: george.karaolides@linustech.com.cy Republic of Cyprus. |
On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Andrew Stephen wrote:
> Hi
>
> My /var and /usr partitions have just run out of space and I was wondering
> what is the best way to copy them to a new drive that has just been
> installed.
>
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Andrew
>
>
>
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