[plug] Disk space ...

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On 5/21/06, Dave Dartnall <darts at dialix.com.au> wrote:
> Or rather lack of it!
>
> Here is the output from df on my system:
>
> Filesystem            Size    Used     Avail    Use%  Mounted on
>
> /dev/hdb6             2.9G    255M    2.5G    10%     /
> /dev/hdb1             479M   12M      443M  3%        /boot
> /dev/hdb9              13G     5.5G     7.3G    43%     /home
> /dev/hdb8             2.9G    2.6G     157M   95%     /usr
> /dev/hdb7             7.7G    6.4G     986M   87%      /var
>
> Obviously dumb initial partitioning - and now I've run out of room on
> /usr and /var.
>
> I read somewhere that it's possible to increase the capacity of a
> partition by initialising (touching?) a file elsewhere and somehow
> linking the full directory to it. There's spare room on /home and root
> that maybe could be used? How is this done - if at all?
>
> Preferably though, I'd like to install a new hard disk and transfer the
> existing system with all it's settings and links etc to larger
> partitions. Is this possible or is it necessary to reinstall everything?
> And if possible how is it done?
>
> Let's assume that I can install the new drive, that the system will
> recognise it and that I can partition it using Mandriva's utility. What
> then...
>
> Any help / pointers would be appreciated.
>
> Dave Dartnall
> _______________________________________________
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>
Well you could make new mount points elsewhere and mount levels
underneath from that. An example will explain better:
/home/tomasz <-- this guy is greedy, the rest of /home is 100MB, but
/home/tomasz is 1000MB so I want to move his to.. /usr for example,
which is a different partition (with 20000MB free).
# mkdir /usr/tomasz
# cd /usr/tomasz
# cp -a /home/tomasz .
(the -a flag will preserve all attributes, like sym links, file modes,
etc etc, even a /dev file system will copy okay).
# rm -rf /home/tomasz
# ln -s /usr/tomasz /home/tomasz
There. My home directory is in another partition, and I get the space
I want now. From my perspective, I'm still at /home/tomasz too, which
is nice.

Hopefully that will get you going.
Tomasz