I am constantly trying to clear out files on /dev/sd1 to stop MySQL from running out of space. How can I tap into all that free space on /dev/sda2? I would love to split the partition up better i.e. give /dev/sda1 more free space.

This is why you should use LVM on servers, IMHO.

However, my suggestion (assuming this is a live system) is to resize the sda2 partition (shrink it), and create a new one. Stop the MySQL server and copy everything (preserving permissions) from your MySQL directory (/var/lib/mysql mayhaps?) to the new partition. Temporarily move the old data in the MySQL directory to somewhere safe until you know the following step works: Mount the new partition as /var/lib/mysql or whatever your MySQL directory is. Start the server and hope for the best.

This is indeed a quick and ugly version, there are far more professional ways of duplicating a MySQL database but I am not very familiar with them.

would there be any way to add a portion of that large partition to my current /dev/sda1? also that was the part i need help on, the actual management of the partitions. ive never worked with partitioning manually on linux

ok so i just found out that i cannot have a root partition of more than 10GB(Amazon EC2).

how exactly would i go about using symlinks to point to the 300GB+ drive?

Just googled and read a bit and not sure you can symlink that way.
What I did see left a bit to be desired as it looked like it was planned by bean counters rather than folks who would actually use the system.

What files are you needing to clear out of /dev/sda1? Are they in your home directory?

What do you have on /dev/sda2? My opinion is that /dev/sda2 should be split up. It could be that you should make a separate /home partition, but it all depends on what is eating up the room on /dev/sda1.

Hi,

My Oracle 10gR2 test base works fine with symlinks. I don't now about MySQL, but I think you have to make a backup of your base and try it.

Hi,

I would make sure to have a backup of everything that you value on the machine before doing anything else. Backup!

I would not perform any maintenance on a Live machine. You may need to schedule downtime to do some regeneration. Seems like you need to do it real soon.

Once you have the machine then boot with the install media or a LiveCD. Shrink the partition on '/dev/sda2' with 'parted' or whatever but allow some space for the '/mnt' since for some reason someone allocated that space originally.

Once you have the partition shrunk to the desired size then you can use 'parted', cfdisk or even fdisk to create partitions for your use. Make sure that you allow for growth. Once you have created the new partition an prepared a filesystem on that partition, you can then copy or move contents to the new partition. Once this is done then you could mount the '/dev/sda?' on the mount point you desire/use. If you do 'cp' then be certain to preserve everything with the '-p' option. 'man cp' to see the details.

On most servers that I maintain, partitions are created in the manner to allow growth and prevention of floods so the system won't be taken down. Sometimes multiple hdd/subsystems are used to allow good partitioning schemes for both prevention for loss of space problems and other potential problems.

You are aware of other filesystem types?