As usual thanks for all the help:
Brian O'Connor, Christian Miranda, Pam Woods, Robert
McMillin, Dr. Tom Blinn, Alex Gorbachev, Guy Dallaire, Alan
Rollow, Stephen henry, Lucien Hercaud, Fabio Bossi, Martin
Moore and probably others.
original inquiry:
"I am looking for some suggestions on how best to increase
space in /usr -
df shows 99% used. /usr is on a 1gb disk with / , /var and some swap.
I obviously made the wrong guesses when I partitioned it initially and I
have /var on the same disk with only 16% used.
Further, there is another 2gb disk with 1 gb allocated to /data and
approx 1gb unallocated.
If I redo the disk label and increase the /usr partition at the expense of
the /var do I need to backup/restore /usr AND /var or will /usr survive
the increase in the partition? (it comes first in the
partition table). Are there any gotchas if I reduce the
/var partition? Any tips/hints on this procedure?
As an alternative, what are the politics of linking a
/var/users directory to /usr/users (i.e. moving /usr/users
to /var/users)? Any major problems with this as a solution?
BTW / , /usr and /var are advfs. "
Summary:
1. Good first suggestion was simply - check and delete any
core files lying around.
2. The most popular suggestion was use addvol:
"If you are using AdvFS, you can add the disk portion
unallocated to existing domain.
# addvol [ /dev/free_partition ] [ domain ]
# balance [ domain ]"
Howver to use addvol you need to purchase the PAK license:
"> Thanks for the reply btw - I was reading the documents
and
> it suggested that you needed to add a PAK license if you
> were going to add more than 1 volume to a domain. Any ideas?
Yes that's right, but in the long term the utilities are worth it
(the PAK costs a few hundred dollars, and IMHO advfs isn't worth it
without the utilities)
Without addvol I guess you are stuck with either
-house keeping on the /usr partition(netscape cache directories etc) or
-mounting the new partition, moving data to it(/usr/share /usr/var are
candidates) and linking(the traditional solution)or
-backing up the usr partion, redoing the partitions, and
restoring the data(long term, if you are not going to get addvol
I would advise this)"
re the partition:
Since you have free space on your /data disk (assuming you've got a 1GB
/data partition, not a 2GB partition with 1GB used), you may be able to make
your life simpler by backing up the /var partition to unused space on the
/data disk, then re-sizing its partition on the shared root disk, then put
it back and then backup /usr to the /data disk, resize its partition on the
root disk, then move it back. It's messy, but it's do-able if you don't
blow it.
You can not just change the partition sizes in the disk label. That doesn't
work.
THE Fastest: Move the most full directories to another partition/disk and
softlink them back to the original location.
Commands: Directory disk space usage: du -sk *
Soft Link creation: ln -s <location> <link>
None of our file systems current know how to grow into newly available
space, so you will have to backup/restore. Unless you're using AdvFS
for /usr and then you can add the unused partition to the domain with
addvol (if the have the Utilities). The other choice might be to
migrate a large part of /usr to the unused partition. /usr/users
would be a good choice if it is a significant fraction of the space
used in /usr. To do this you would:
1. Create a file system on the unused partition.
2. Move the data.
mount /dev/whatever /mnt
cd /usr/users
tar cf - . | ( cd /mnt ; tar xpf - . )
umount /mnt
pwd # to verify you are in /usr/users
rm -r * # this is why you verify...
mount /dev/whatever /usr/users
3. Having a backup before this is wise.
If you change the disklabel on this disk, you will have to back up and restore
both /usr and /var, recreating the filesystems in the process. The filesystems
will *not* automatically pick up the change in size of the partitions.
But if you have a free 1GB partition, why not just newfs/mkfdmn on it and
mount it on /usr/users? You can mount filesystems anywhere in the directory
hierarchy--it doesn't have to be at the top level.
On linking:
> As an alternative, what are the politics of linking a
/var/users
> directory to /usr/users (i.e. moving /usr/users to /var/users)? Any
> major problems with this as a solution?
"None, unless you can think of a situation (i.e.,
single-user) where you
might need that space."
"I think that would work too. I personally am in favor of
changing the
home directory entry in the passwd file, but scripts that have the
home directory hard coded will fail. I try to use as few links as
possible. "
---------------------------------------------------------
Craig Silva, Electronic Outreach Program Officer
Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne Australia
e-mail: csilva_at_vichealth.vic.gov.au, Tel: 61 3 9345 3211
Post: PO Box 154, Carlton Sth Victoria. 3053. Australia
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Received on Thu Jan 30 1997 - 03:20:03 NZDT