Okay, so in the last couple of days I've been in a rush to put together my new machines, install FreeBSD on both of them for the first time in my life, and get them down to my colo place.. Well, one is entirely for my database, meaning I should have a large /var space set.. It totally slipped my mind even though I completely intended on making it large.

Now my machines are down at the colo, and I can't switch the database over to the new machine because it says my space on /var is filled up.. Is there anyway to switch it so that /var has a ton of space instead of /usr remotely? Or am I completely screwed all the way around and will have to make a trip down to the colo and perhaps even reinstall everything?

(I'm on FreeBSD 5.0)

Well, if you have enough free space on another partition you could cp -Rp the contents of /usr/* to that 3rd partition (maybe /home/usr ?), then umount /usr and newfs it (make sure you verify the contents copied successfully to the new partition first!). Next remount the original /usr partition as something else (maybe /mnt/var ?) and cp -Rp the contents of /var/* over to it (probably have to stop syslogd first, as well as any daemons running in /var, like named). Verify that it cp'd OK, then umount and newfs the old /var partition. Now umount /mnt/var and remount the same partition on /var. Last, mount the old /var partition on /usr and cp -Rp /home/usr/* to the new /usr.

Obviously, the above only works if you have enough space on another partition to hold the conents of /usr (or you could swap the contents of /var first, since it'll be smaller). As long as the current /var has enough space for the current /usr, you'll be OK.

The only commands you need *should* be in /bin and /sbin.

Wow, mind dumbing that down at all? (I'd hate to say 'a step by step command run down', but that might be what I need, heh.)

When I go back into sysinstall remotely and then go to the disk label editor this is how it shows:

Disk: ad1 Partition name: ad1s1 Free: 0 blocks (0MB)

Part Mount Size Newfs Part Mount Size Newfs
---- ----- ---- ----- ---- ----- ---- -----
ad1s1a <none> 256MB *
ad1s1b swap 1963MB SWAP
ad1s1d <none> 256MB *
ad1s1e <none> 256MB *
ad1s1f <none> 73585MB *


To match that up, here's df:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ad1s1a 257838 125602 111610 53% /
devfs 1 1 0 100% /dev
/dev/ad1s1e 257838 2 237210 0% /tmp
/dev/ad1s1f 74157736 2830846 65394272 4% /usr
/dev/ad1s1d 257838 237212 0 100% /var

The way it sounds is I have to keep the sizes the same still? Just physically move what is where? I'd love to have 10GB on /usr and 60GB on /var.. Too bad when I installed it all I didn't know enough about FreeBSD or what exactly I'd need to plan for it.. I'd just run downtown to the colo and reinstall everything tomorrow but I don't have my car anymore.

I really hate my sites at this point, anyone want to buy a PR 5 and a PR 6 site. :-p haha. I'm only half way kidding.

That only looks like 11GB, unless my math is totally wrong. What happened to all your other space? If you still have diskspace left, you can use fdisk to create a new slice (ad1s2).

/dev/ad1s1f 74157736 2830846 65394272 4% /usr

aka 74GB.

I might be just getting around it now.. It's really p'ing me off though.. Now I'm trying to get mySQL to work and run out of /usr instead of /var.