how to redefine the mount table?

xpucto · 02-03-2006, 04:52 AM

Hi!
By typing df -h, I just saw that the / is full.

Code:

df -h
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0      2.4G   2.4G     0K   100%    /
/proc                    0K     0K     0K     0%    /proc
mnttab                   0K     0K     0K     0%    /etc/mnttab
fd                       0K     0K     0K     0%    /dev/fd
swap                   275M   176K   275M     1%    /var/run
swap                   275M     0K   275M     0%    /tmp
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4      583M   465M    59M    89%    /home
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3      379M   272M    68M    80%    /var_old
/dev/md/dsk/d0          28G    27G   796M    98%    /servers

How can I redifine the mounting points so that there is more room for the /? Can I just give the directories under / another mounting point?
My problem is that everything seems to be quite full.

I just became this server and I have to transfer this data to another server. Doing scp for big amount (5GB) of data give error messages. I thought that It might be because the system needs a bit space in order to execute the command and that / being full could be the reason why I get error trying to scp big directories.

Thanks for any suggestion

heleen · 02-03-2006, 05:32 AM

hi there
right: everything seems to be quite full
well.. have you ever tried removing something from your / ? uninstalling some unused packages? deleting something? you certainly need more space on your comp. maybe you should re-partition your disk..

xpucto · 02-03-2006, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heleen

hi there
right: everything seems to be quite full
well.. have you ever tried removing something from your / ? uninstalling some unused packages? deleting something? you certainly need more space on your comp. maybe you should re-partition your disk..

Yes. I first thought that there are only system files under / but I finally found a few stuff that I could delete. I just have to inquire myself if I'm allowed to since I'm not the author of all those files...

drakebasher · 02-04-2006, 01:00 PM

You won't be able to do anything unless you have root permission. If you have more space on another partition, you can move some of your files there. I'd suggest you first try to find out what's using all of the space. Check first for log files in /var. Unchecked, they can get big and some of them serve no purpose if you aren't having problems. If you have lots of applications, then /usr can get very big. If you have root permissions, you can move /usr like so:

1) copy ('cp -av') all files from present /usr directory to new partition
2) delete all files from present /usr directory
3) edit /etc/fstab to add entry for mounting the new /usr partition to the /usr mount point
4) run 'mount /usr'

This needs to be done in text mode, so you aren't actually running any of the programs in /usr while you are moving them.

Another point: if you try to copy an entire system while it is running, you will get lots of error messages and you will copy lots of stuff you shouldn't. Many files are dynamic: they don't exist when you shut down the system. /proc/ is one example. If you want to just copy the entire system to another hard drive, you may want to do that with a LiveCD or from a temporary minimal Linux.

xpucto · 02-07-2006, 08:35 AM

Finally I just mv /usr/local to /servers

and made a symbolic link.

Is it an "acceptable" way of doing?
What is actually the difference between making symbolic links and redefining the mounting table?

drakebasher · 02-11-2006, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xpucto

Finally I just mv /usr/local to /servers

and made a symbolic link.

Is it an "acceptable" way of doing?
What is actually the difference between making symbolic links and redefining the mounting table?

It's an ugly fix, but I think it will be okay for now. But if /usr/local grows much, you may have a problem again since the /servers partition is pretty full. I think the only "difference" between the symbolic link and the normal way is that it's not intuitive: that is, it may be a problem for the administrator, but probably not for Linux.