No subject

So, no, it's not available.  The physical disk still has the files there and
the file/directory structure is still there.  You can think of it like
temporarily linking over the directory where mounted.

> Doing a df before and after seems to suggest that the space is now up for
> grabs on hda1 but I'd like to confirm this before going too far along my
> current machine-rebuilding track.  I have rtfm'd but this does not seem to
> be given much weight.

Hmm .. perhaps df doesn't count up what's free but rather counts what's used
then subtracts it from the size of the disk (?).

> Supplementary questions:  In hindsight would it have been better to rename
> the original /foo directory to say /foo1, then copy the files to /FOO,
then
> edit fstab and finally delete the /foo1 directory?

I think:
(cd /foo;tar cpsSl --same-owner --atime-preserve --ignore-failed-read  -
/foo/*) | (cd /FOO;tar xpsS --same-owner --atime-preserve -f -)
umount /foo
mount -t ext2 /dev/hd<??> -o rw,<other> /foo
then edit /etc/fstab to reflect how /foo was mounted above - ie. with the
correct <??> partition and <other> options.

YMMV

- Brian.