Partition Expansion Idea
 

Hi Everyone,

I have been toying with trying something and I am not sure if it is possible ( or wise ).
Here we go .....

I am currently running Gentoo 1.4
My partitioning scheme is very simple:
/dev/hda1 /boot 34MB
/dev/hda2 /swap 128MB
/dev/had3 / 4GB

The remainder of the disk houses LFS, Mandrake 9.2 and Slackware distros.
Well, it didn't take long to fill root on /dev/hda3.

What I am thinking of doing is installing a second 20GB hard disk: /dev/hdb.
I would like to create a partition, say /dev/hdb1 with 10GB of disk space.

Can I safely copy the contents of my /usr directory on /dev/hda3 to this new partition, rename the /usr directory on /dev/hda3 to something like usr.bak and mount this new partition on /dev/hda3 as /usr with the new space and old files while not messing up such things as symlinks?

I figure that if the new partition doesn't work, I can always fall back on my saved copy of /usr.bak by renaming it /usr.


This sounds like a simple solution to a (common?) space problem but I don't want to risk hosing my current installation.

Thanks everyone.

Yes, you can. Do it while in runlevel 1, so the stuff in /usr won't be needed. Edit fstab and add an entry for the /usr partition. Example:
$mke2fs /dev/hdb1
$vi /etc/fstab
#*Stuff added to fstab*
/dev/hdb1 /usr ext2 defaults 0 0

$mv /usr /usr.bak
$mkdir /usr
$mount /dev/hdb1
$cp -a /usr.bak/* /usr
*long wait*
$init 5
You're all set! If it works okay, you can delete /usr.bak.

aaa,

I figured that as long as I backed up /usr I would be okay if something went wrong during the copy. Good point about staying in runlevel 1.

Thanks for the input.