Hello everyone, I've painted myself into a corner here and I'm hoping you all can save me.

I'm running Fedora 7 on a machine w/ a 120 GB hard drive sectioned into 20 and 100 GB. The 20 GB is hda1 and used for the linux install. The 100 GB section is hda2 and mounted as /data. I'm using some high end computational programs (Fluent, IDL, AutoCAD, etc). Originally I had planned to install them to the 20 GB. However, some of these programs generate pretty large files and put them in their home directory. Therefore, I need to move my /usr file from the 20 GB hda1 to the 100 GB hda2. Basically, I want to change my current /data to /usr. I would normally re-install to do this, but the license files are tied to the machine name and other data that might change if I re-install. So, is it possible to move my /usr folder to the second partition without pooching my install? Thanks!

Scott

Try this (I hope you have backups of important data, but I doubt this will kill anything )
Stop any programs that might be writing to /usr Then:

Copy all of /usr to /data
("# " Means "As root", do not type the "#"):
Now unmount your "data" partition ( /dev/hda2 )
Now remount it "over" your /usr directory
I am assuming you have an ext3 filesystem on /dev/hda2. Modify "ext3" if not.
Your old /usr data should still be there, but invisible, and replaced with the data from /dev/hda2
To get your old /usr back, just unmount dev/hda2 from the /usr directory:
Edit: It might be safest to do this from a "live CD" - it depends on what programs / data you have in /usr - it is not a good idea to move things about whilst they are in use. Then you'll need to update your fstab to reflect the new mounting

Try the following as root in single user mode:

Check to make sure the two directories look the same and then edit your /etc/fstab file and change /data to /usr in the entry for /dev/hda2.

Now, the following steps may cause you to not be able to do anything, but they should be fine. The first one will certainly work. It is the second that may not work, but if it doesn't, all is not lost, you will just need to reboot from a rescue CD, so make sure you have one before you continue. What you will need to do in rescue mode is make the /usr directory and then reboot.

If that worked, try:

Reboot to make sure everything is working, and then you can remove /usr-bak

HTH

Forrest

Yes, you can move /usr to /dev/hda2. You have the added complication of what are you going to do with /data? Assuming that you have moved the /data tree someplace else then you can move /usr to /dev/hda2 this way:

Log in as root

umount /dev/hda2

Format /dev/hda2. Assuming that you want /dev/hda2 to be ext3 then you format with:

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda2

Then mount /dev/hda2 on a temporary directory.

mkdir /newusr

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /newuser

Then copy /usr to /newusr

cp -pR /usr/* /newusr

Then add an entry to /etc/fstab to describe /dev/hda2 as being mounted on /usr.

Reboot and check that everything is OK. If it is then boot a rescue CD and delete the old copy of data on /usr so that /usr is an empty directory:

Boot the rescue CD.
mkdir /part1
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /part1
rm /part1/usr/* -R

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Steve Stites

Yes. And it is trivially simple. Reinstalling is never necessary in *nix when you move something.

You have two choices. Being lazy, I usually do it the first way that I will describe.

First choice: Copy the entire /usr file to the other partition, so that that partition has a directory named usr at its top level. Then on your boot partition, just make a symlink to the new usr directory. Specifically, assuming the hard drive is hda with partitions hda1 and hda2 mounted at /mnt/hda1 and /mnt/hda2, do this:
Then test it. When you are satisfied it works, delete usrold from /.

The second way is to copy the contents of usr to /mnt/hda2, but copy all the contents and not the directory /usr itself. The result is that you will have, for instance, a bin directory on /mnt/hda2, but it won't be a /usr/bin directory on hda2.

Then edit /etc/fstab and add this line:

/dev/hda2 /usr ext3 defaults 1 1

Save fstab, and reboot.

Now /usr is on hda2.

4 similar, but different, ways to do it in 5 minutes

UTKEngineer will have a headache soon. I'm not sure which way is "best".

@forrestt: "Single user mode" (without your GUI running) is an excellent idea (so you can ignore my "live CD" comment)

Looking forward to hearing how you get on.

Actually, except for my symlink suggestion, they are all functionally equivalent methods.

Possibly off-topic:
Yes. I had thought of using a link, but there's something in the back of my mind about links across different partitions: Hard links, soft links & different drives / partitions (Alarm Bells are ringing in my ears)
I need to read those man pages again

Wait a little bit and Andy Tannenbaum will chime in with "It's best to do it on a microkernel."

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Steve Stites

Hey all,

I mistakenly tried to do this from the GUI today. My computer hung up after issuing the copy command. Upon restarting, the computer wouldn't load the GUI. So, tomorrow I'm going to go rooting around with a live cd and hope that I can fix whatever I've messed up. I may end up re-installing anyway

I really appreciate everyone's help and am sorry that I managed to screw up anyway.

you can use soft links from pretty much anyplace to anyplace. Hard links can only be on the same filesystem.

I actually symlink /home from / to a different HD, and I also symlink the documents section of /usr to another HD.

you don't need a live cd. Just boot to a console.

I'm sorry, can you give me a little more information? I'm pretty new to Linux and only know what I've had to figure out for my research (I'm a grad student).

how about I post a little more info and hopefully you can tell me if I'm beyond hope or not?


When I boot the computer, it starts going through it's boot checklist and arrives at the following error:

Checking filesystems [FAILED]

fsck.ext3:Unable to resolve 'LABEL=/data'



Then it asks for the root password and dumps me to a shell.


Any ideas? Thanks for any help you can offer.

Scott

Oooops! What have you done?

Just copying files to /data should not have done this!
There is a problem in your fstab where it is trying to fsck your data partition, but it cannot find it.
Can you use this shell? (If not, you'll have to boot from a rescue CD)
Can you see or mount your root partition (/dev/hda1)?
The outputs from
mount
fdisk -l
would be useful to know

Edit your /etc/fstab file on /dev/hda1 so the line referring to 'LABEL=/data' refers to /dev/hda2 instead of the LABEL=/data. Then reboot.

If this is difficult, instead of editing fstab post it here, along with the output of fdisk -l and we'll see what can be done.