Re: Moving /var to another drive

[Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org>]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 04:42:37PM +0100, François Chenais wrote:
> And what happens if the /var/log and /var/run dirs that can change during
> the tar ?

That's my main disagreement with George's instructions.  Go to
single-user mode _before_ you copy /var and /usr to the new drive
instead of after copying them.  This will shut down all the various
daemons that might be modifying data while you work.

(The lesser disagreement is that I would use cpio instead of tar, but
that's really just a matter of taste.)

So, how I do it:

1.  Shut down machine[1]
2.  Install new drive
3.  Boot to single-user mode
4.  cfdisk /dev/hdnew
5.  mount /dev/hdnewvar /mnt
6.  cd /var
7.  find . -xdev -print0 | cpio -pvdm0 /mnt
8.  umount /mnt
9.  Repeat steps 5-8 for /usr
10. Update /etc/fstab
11. Reboot

or

11. umount /var && umount /usr && mount -a && init 2

[1]  I'm assuming that the box is not hot-swap capable, so you have
to power down to install the new drive.  If it is hot-swappable, just
plug the drive in and use `init 1` to get to single-user mode.

-- 
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have already won. - reverius

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