plug New Partition

[David Campbell]

> Date:          Tue, 26 May 1998 22:43:41 +0800
> From:          Doug Clulow <clulow at upnaway.com>
> To:            "plug at linux.org.au" <plug at linux.org.au>
> Subject:       plug New Partition
> Reply-to:      plug at linux.org.au

> Hi all
> 
> I have created a new partition in an attempt to transfer some of my HD
> space from Windows to Linux ;-).  My question is how can I incorporate
> the space into my current directory system.  What seems like the way to
> go is to put an entry into fstab like:
> 
> /dev/hdb3      /usr   ext2    defaults  1  1
> 
> /dev/hdb3 is the new partition, which is currently mounted under /new. I
> can't seem to find out if mounting under /usr will do anything nasty to
> my current /usr directory, and if so what  do I do to add it to my
> /usr/local space, which is full.

Partitioning of drives is one of those "holy wars" of linux.
*turning flame shield up to 10*

<WAFFLE>
Firstly the root partition must contain at least /etc /sbin /bin (*) to be 
able to boot to the point where you can start mounting other partitions. 
Since /usr is often big this is sometimes NFS mounted off a central 
server. I am speaking from experience where I had a lab full of Linux 
boxes, 486-33 with 200MB HDD also running Win3.1

(*) To be on the safe side I normally create a /usr/sbin and /usr/bin for
some useful system utils. When /usr is mounted it "hides" the /usr
entries on the root partition. Therefore a minimal root partition is
around 10MB
</WAFFLE>

Getting back to your original question "will do anything nasty?", the
answer is it will hide any existing files/directories in /usr/local.

Therefore if you have a spare partition which you wish to user for 
/usr/local then do the following:

cp -a /usr/local/* /new	# -a is for archive copy, keeps owners, 
			# permisions, sym links, dates & time
			# also recursively copies sub-dirs
umount /new		# dismount the volume for the moment
rm -R /usr/local/*	# Free the existing space. These files would be 
			# "hidden" when we mount /usr/local so why have them.
vi /etc/fstab		# Add the entry for /usr/local
mount -a		# Force "mount all" which happens at startup

David Campbell

PS: Last night I managed to get into ftp.redhat.com (after 50+ attempts). 
I am draging down the everything except the "alpha" and "src" directories.
Don't expect the local au mirrors to be up to date for several weeks 
(since most mirror programs have a single attempt and then move on). 
Hopefully by Monday I will have enough to cut a CD (including the updates)
=======================================================
campbell at torque.net

"All parallel ports are equal - Some are more equal than others"