Moving /var
 

I've run out of space on my gentoo installed partition which specifically holds /var

I intend to move the folder into the maind drive under /

I have already created a folder in the main drive called /my/var into which ive copied all the files.

I was wondering if there is a was of mount /my/var as /var (as far as the computer can tell) so that it may give me time to delete the old partition on which /var originally resides so that i can create a new large partition onto which i will copy the /var back.

I have tried to use mount --bind /var /myvar

but doing an ls /var still points to the contents of the old folder.

Any ideas?

Does it work if you create a symbolic link in / called var and point it to /my/var?

Try renaming /var ro /var.sav and create a link. If this doesn't work, you can just rename it back (even if you need a rescue disk).

You can create a softlink from /var to /my/var, so that anything trying to access /var will actually to to /my/var.

ln -s /var /my/var

[EDIT]Oops, beat me to it[EDIT]

~Justin

Whenever I do fiddly stuff like that, I like to boot up a LiveCD. I'm not enough of a Linux expert to know when messing with /var or /tmp will break the OS out from under me. With a LiveCD, I'd just be messing with some non-OS files.

My latest experimentation has been with diskless net-booting. It's almost creepy, being able to shut down the client computer entirely and still have access to its OS files on the server.

hmmm, this hasnt worked, its still displaying the contents of the old /var when i type ls /var

i can tell this as i have created a new file in /my/var called temp.txt which isnt showing up

Remember that you need to unmount /var before moving it around. Really, trying to do this stuff on a "live" system seems a bit foolhardy to me. I'd personally boot up a LiveCD like Knoppix to do this stuff.

But assuming you can mess with /var in a live system without breaking it, here are the steps you'll need to do:

unmount /var
mv /var /varBACKUP
ln -s /my/var /var

Note that the existing /var folder should be empty (you use an empty directory to mark a mountpoint for another partition). Using "mv" to rename it rather than deleting it outright is merely an overly paranoid precaution.

The "ln -s" statement creates the symlink the correct way. The statement shown above has it the wrong way around. The example I give creates a new link in the position "/var", pointed at "/my/var".

Thanks gang, yes, a live CD is a much better idea. I did as you described and worked perfectly... hope 5 gb is enough for /var! lol if not then i'll resize (another new and heartstopping experience)

thanks again :)