[gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Matthias Langer]

I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition, 
because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both 
directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed 
very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to 
[with the boot-cd]

# mv /usr /mnt/newHD/
# mv /home /mnt/newHD/
# ln -s /mnt/newHD/usr usr
# ln -s /mnt/newHD/home home

However, I'm not sure if this is the suggested method of doing so and to 
be honest, I'm not completley sure if this would even work.

Any comments or suggestions ?
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Joe Menola]

On Thursday October 6 2005 7:49 pm, Matthias Langer wrote:
> I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition,
> because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both
> directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed
> very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to
> [with the boot-cd]
>
> # mv /usr /mnt/newHD/
> # mv /home /mnt/newHD/
> # ln -s /mnt/newHD/usr usr
> # ln -s /mnt/newHD/home home
>
> However, I'm not sure if this is the suggested method of doing so and to
> be honest, I'm not completley sure if this would even work.
>
> Any comments or suggestions ?

In theory I suppose that would work. Myself, I would copy the contents 
to /mnt/newHD/ then rename the original directories and create the links. The 
renamed directories can be deleted after you've verified positive results. 
And if it all craps out, the originals can simply be renamed back to /usr 
and /home.
You should consider creating separate partitions for these though. At some 
point you may wish to blow out the install but retain your /home. Separate 
partitions makes this much easier. And also opens the possibility of sharing 
your /home with multiple installs.

HTH -jm
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[W.Kenworthy]

If you want to move directories, avoid wholesale symlinking like this as
it always ends in tears ...

Using a liveCD, create your partitions and directories, then copy
everything over (rsync or tar is best to make sure its accurate), change
your fstab then reboot.  When you are happy its working, you can recover
the old directories at leisure.

For the future: I found that since I stated using LVM, this sort of
exercise becomes a lot easier, safer and has less downtime.

BillK


On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 02:49 +0200, Matthias Langer wrote:
> I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition, 
> because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both 
> directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed 
> very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to 
> [with the boot-cd]
> 
> # mv /usr /mnt/newHD/
> # mv /home /mnt/newHD/
> # ln -s /mnt/newHD/usr usr
> # ln -s /mnt/newHD/home home
> 
> However, I'm not sure if this is the suggested method of doing so and to 
> be honest, I'm not completley sure if this would even work.
> 
> Any comments or suggestions ?
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Matthias Langer]

Joe Menola wrote:

>On Thursday October 6 2005 7:49 pm, Matthias Langer wrote:
>  
>
>>I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition,
>>because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both
>>directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed
>>very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to
>>[with the boot-cd]
>>
>># mv /usr /mnt/newHD/
>># mv /home /mnt/newHD/
>># ln -s /mnt/newHD/usr usr
>># ln -s /mnt/newHD/home home
>>
>>However, I'm not sure if this is the suggested method of doing so and to
>>be honest, I'm not completley sure if this would even work.
>>
>>Any comments or suggestions ?
>>    
>>
>
>In theory I suppose that would work. Myself, I would copy the contents 
>to /mnt/newHD/ then rename the original directories and create the links. The 
>renamed directories can be deleted after you've verified positive results. 
>And if it all craps out, the originals can simply be renamed back to /usr 
>and /home.
>You should consider creating separate partitions for these though. At some 
>point you may wish to blow out the install but retain your /home. Separate 
>partitions makes this much easier. And also opens the possibility of sharing 
>your /home with multiple installs.
>
>HTH -jm
>  
>
Well, maybe you are right and creating a /usr and a /home partition is 
the better choice. As I want to buy a 250GB drive, I'm thinking of 20G 
for /usr and 230GB for home, while still 16GB remain for /opt, /root, 
/bin .... .
Now another genooist pointed out that  it would be wiser to use rsync or 
tar instead of just
# cp - r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
So, should I enter
# rsync -r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
or are there some options I should activate to make sure I get what I want ?

Thanks, Matthias
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Friday 07 October 2005 03:52, Matthias Langer wrote:
> Joe Menola wrote:
> >On Thursday October 6 2005 7:49 pm, Matthias Langer wrote:
> >>I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition,
> >>because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both
> >>directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed
> >>very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to
> >>[with the boot-cd]
> >>
> >># mv /usr /mnt/newHD/
> >># mv /home /mnt/newHD/
> >># ln -s /mnt/newHD/usr usr
> >># ln -s /mnt/newHD/home home
> >>
> >>However, I'm not sure if this is the suggested method of doing so and to
> >>be honest, I'm not completley sure if this would even work.
> >>
> >>Any comments or suggestions ?
> >
> >In theory I suppose that would work. Myself, I would copy the contents
> >to /mnt/newHD/ then rename the original directories and create the links.
> > The renamed directories can be deleted after you've verified positive
> > results. And if it all craps out, the originals can simply be renamed
> > back to /usr and /home.
> >You should consider creating separate partitions for these though. At some
> >point you may wish to blow out the install but retain your /home. Separate
> >partitions makes this much easier. And also opens the possibility of
> > sharing your /home with multiple installs.
> >
> >HTH -jm
>
> Well, maybe you are right and creating a /usr and a /home partition is
> the better choice. As I want to buy a 250GB drive, I'm thinking of 20G
> for /usr and 230GB for home, while still 16GB remain for /opt, /root,
> /bin .... .
> Now another genooist pointed out that  it would be wiser to use rsync or
> tar instead of just
> # cp - r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
> So, should I enter
> # rsync -r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
> or are there some options I should activate to make sure I get what I want
> ?

if you want to use copy, I would prefer cp -a ;)

hm, go to the suse site - they have a step-by-step example to move whole 
directory-trees from one partition to another.. or had it some yoears ago.
They used tar, for some reasons they mentioned and I forgot ;)
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[John Jolet]

On Thursday 06 October 2005 20:52, Matthias Langer wrote:
> Joe Menola wrote:
> >On Thursday October 6 2005 7:49 pm, Matthias Langer wrote:
> >>I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition,
> >>because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both
> >>directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed
> >>very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to
> >>[with the boot-cd]
> >>
> Now another genooist pointed out that  it would be wiser to use rsync or
> tar instead of just
> # cp - r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
> So, should I enter
> # rsync -r /usr /mnt/newHd_part_usr/
> or are there some options I should activate to make sure I get what I want
> ?
>
> Thanks, Matthias
rsync -a will get all times and permissions, /etc.  I would STRONGLY second 
what the other guy said about lvm, though.  If you buy a new hard drive, 
don't just put filesystems and partitions on it, go the LVM route, make the 
logical volumes small, and don't use the whole drive for lvs, you can grow 
anything you want later.
-- 
John Jolet
Your On-Demand IT Department
512-762-0729
www.jolet.net
john@jolet.net
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Roy Wright]

John Jolet wrote:

>On Thursday 06 October 2005 20:52, Matthias Langer wrote:
>  
>
>>Joe Menola wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On Thursday October 6 2005 7:49 pm, Matthias Langer wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I want to move the /usr and /home directories to another partition,
>>>>because I'm thinking of buying a new HD. It would be great if both
>>>>directories were on the same partition, as splitting drives never seemed
>>>>very appealing to me. As far as I know, one possibility would be to
>>>>[with the boot-cd]
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/partitioning-p1.xml

worked nicely for me when I moved /home to a second drive...

HTH,
Roy
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:07:41 +0800, W.Kenworthy wrote:

> If you want to move directories, avoid wholesale symlinking like this as
> it always ends in tears ...

If you want two directories on the same partition, I prefer to mount them
with --bind. I do this to have /usr, /var and /opt on a single
partition, separate from/. /usr is mounted on the partition itself, which
contains var and opt directories, which are mounted with the following
fstab lines.

/usr/var	/var	auto	bind	0 0
/usr/opt	/opt	auto	bind	0 0


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Headline: "Explosion At Sperm Bank, Nurses Overcome"

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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[capsel]

I tryed to do links to directories on other partition on my
experimental server with SELinux. It had some problems with labeling
filesystem.
Is it possible to solve this issue?

2005/10/7, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk>:
> On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:07:41 +0800, W.Kenworthy wrote:
>
> > If you want to move directories, avoid wholesale symlinking like this as
> > it always ends in tears ...
>
> If you want two directories on the same partition, I prefer to mount them
> with --bind. I do this to have /usr, /var and /opt on a single
> partition, separate from/. /usr is mounted on the partition itself, which
> contains var and opt directories, which are mounted with the following
> fstab lines.
>
> /usr/var        /var    auto    bind    0 0
> /usr/opt        /opt    auto    bind    0 0
>
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick
>
> Headline: "Explosion At Sperm Bank, Nurses Overcome"
>
>
>

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 11:40:24 +0200, capsel wrote:

> I tryed to do links to directories on other partition on my
> experimental server with SELinux. It had some problems with labeling
> filesystem.
> Is it possible to solve this issue?

Yes, use mount --bind instead. read the mail you quoted.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 40: Same difference

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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Norberto Bensa]

Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
> if you want to use copy, I would prefer cp -a ;)

Use tar since cp wont preserve empty dirs.

# cd /path/to/old/dir
# tar cf - * | ( cd /path/to/new/dir && tar xf - )


> They used tar, for some reasons they mentioned and I forgot ;)

:)

-- 
Norberto Bensa
4544-9692
Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Matthias Langer]

Neil Bothwick wrote:

>On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:07:41 +0800, W.Kenworthy wrote:
>
>  
>
>>If you want to move directories, avoid wholesale symlinking like this as
>>it always ends in tears ...
>>    
>>
>
>If you want two directories on the same partition, I prefer to mount them
>with --bind. I do this to have /usr, /var and /opt on a single
>partition, separate from/. /usr is mounted on the partition itself, which
>contains var and opt directories, which are mounted with the following
>fstab lines.
>
>/usr/var	/var	auto	bind	0 0
>/usr/opt	/opt	auto	bind	0 0
>
>  
>
Just to be sure, my fstab will contain something like this:

/dev/hdx   /mnt/nHd  reiserfs  defaults,noatime  0   2
/mnt/nHd/usr  /usr  auto  bind  0 0
/mnt/nHd/home  /home  auto  bind  0 0

As in
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/partitioning-p1.xml
it is suggested to copy the contents of home in single user
mode to be sure there are no open files, i'm considering
copying the /usr directory after booting with
the live-cd.

Thank you all for your help !
Matthias

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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Matthias Langer]

Norberto Bensa wrote:

>Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
>  
>
>>if you want to use copy, I would prefer cp -a ;)
>>    
>>
>
>Use tar since cp wont preserve empty dirs.
>
># cd /path/to/old/dir
># tar cf - * | ( cd /path/to/new/dir && tar xf - )
>  
>
What about rsync -a ?

>
>  
>
>>They used tar, for some reasons they mentioned and I forgot ;)
>>    
>>
>
>:)
>
>  
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] /usr and /home to another partition

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:15:21 +0200, Matthias Langer wrote:

> Just to be sure, my fstab will contain something like this:
> 
> /dev/hdx   /mnt/nHd  reiserfs  defaults,noatime  0   2
> /mnt/nHd/usr  /usr  auto  bind  0 0
> /mnt/nHd/home  /home  auto  bind  0 0

That's correct.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

After two weeks of dieting, all I lost was two weeks.

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