I've recently inherited a server and the layout seems to be messy. The partitions look like this:

[me@server ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 139G 2.7G 129G 2% /
tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /dev/shm

Everything seems to be set up under one partition. If I got into / there are directories in there called /var /opt /home etc. This is not what I want. I'd rather have those set up as partitions similar to this example

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 1012M 419M 542M 44% /
/dev/sdb1 147G 32G 108G 23% /backup
/dev/sda1 99M 22M 72M 24% /boot
none 982M 0 982M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda8 116G 14G 97G 13% /home
/dev/sda6 1012M 34M 927M 4% /tmp
/dev/sda2 15G 6.7G 7.0G 50% /usr
/dev/sda5 14G 9.6G 3.0G 77% /var
/tmp 1012M 34M 927M 4% /var/tmp

I'd also rather use LVM so I can extend/shrink file systems etc if I need to in future.

Whats the best way for me to go about this? I've googled it but everything seems to suggest using a GParted Live CD, not really an option for me, as is reinstalling the OS and redoing the partitions (which I would if I could)

Thanks in Advance

Greetingz!

First things first, don't sweat /dev/shm.

Second, I would ask "What benefit would doing all this work have?".
a) Do you have a 'standard' filesystem structure for all your servers?
b) Is there a need to keep everything on this server? (or can you flatten and reload it?)

What happens if this server "breaks"?
a) Are there users that will notice.
b) Will you lose money due to the downtime?

You also mentioned something rather odd....
It kind of sounds like you cannot afford to bring down the system...and doing something as drastic as resizing the main partition, using LVM, and/or replacing important filesystems (like /var) are absolutely out of the question for you.

You will need to bring this system down if you want to change the partition & filesystem layout.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi

The benefit would be I'm going to be running a LAMP setup on this, and I wouldn't want say the backups or something else to potentially fill up the whole (single) partition I have and stop the server working. This server is hosted in a datacentre and my budget is not great for doing things, hence not wanting to take it down or reload everything as that would involve me probably having to pay the hosts to assist. I've already done some configuration before I checked the df command, but I could redo this if I have to.

The server is not currently live so no, no-one will notice and we will not loose money. My concern is taking it down to single user mode and then getting in a mess and having to pay high support fees. If that is what happens I'll have to deal with it and pay, but I'd rather not

I can take it down to single user mode and still access the server via ssh (tested it the other day and it worked) so I think it will be possible, but I can't use a liveCD as I don't think I have a way of adding the media, unless I can do it via KVM.

Is there a way to do this in single user mode?