Is it safe to remount a partition on a working server
 

Hi,

I want to remount /dev/hdb1 which is ext3 and it is mounted with defaults option, and I need to mount it with noatime option on a working mail server.

My question is, is it safe to issue "mount /dev/hdb1 -o defaults,remount,noatime" ?
can I do it while the server is runing and the filesystem handling files IO operations or I have to change /etc/fstab and restart the server.


Regards

Hi Dimsh,


You can do following which I found to be safe:-


change /etc/fstab and add noatime option to "/"

Then issue following command:-


mount -a

I have tested it on machine.


Disclaimer:- blah...

NOATIME?

Did not worked I think:-
STAT REESULTS:-
BEFORE

File: `./xl.tar'
Size: 575150080 Blocks: 1124456 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 1602h/5634d Inode: 1245282 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2006-04-05 11:51:21.000000000 +0530
Modify: 2006-04-05 11:51:21.000000000 +0530
Change: 2006-04-05 11:51:21.000000000 +0530

BEFORE AND "TOUCH" ED

File: `./xl.tar'
Size: 575150080 Blocks: 1124456 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 1602h/5634d Inode: 1245282 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530
Modify: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530
Change: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530

AFTER
File: `./xl.tar'
Size: 575150080 Blocks: 1124456 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 1602h/5634d Inode: 1245282 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530
Modify: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530
Change: 2006-05-31 17:02:19.000000000 +0530

TOUCHED:-
File: `./xl.tar'
Size: 575150080 Blocks: 1124456 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 1602h/5634d Inode: 1245282 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2006-05-31 17:04:04.000000000 +0530
Modify: 2006-05-31 17:04:04.000000000 +0530
Change: 2006-05-31 17:04:04.000000000 +0530

I "diff"ed those files and found last three lines changed every time. So I concluded that It did not worked!

Am I correct?

My method works,

then the access time does not change.

thanks, but I am considering files corruption or some thing bad on a running server, that what i meant by safe ;)

regards