How to assign non-contiguous free space to a filesystem

fab_lab_99 · 06-28-2007, 09:44 AM

Hello.
I am working on a standalone server running RHEL AS 4 upd. 4, no LVM defined. I need to increase the size of my /var filesystem.
First I succesfully reduced the size of /home, /, and /usr filesystems. I gained about 20 GB of free non-contiguous space. This is the output from 'parted /dev/hda print' :

Code:

1          0.031    101.975  primary   ext3        boot
2        101.975   5106.599  primary   ext3
3      12103.660  12833.173  primary   ext3
4      24105.344  38162.219  extended
7      24105.375  28105.905  logical   linux-swap
5      28105.937  32106.467  logical   linux-swap
8      32106.498  32616.342  logical   ext3
6      35102.997  38099.465  logical   linux-swap

The output from 'df -m':

Code:

Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda8                  493       218       255  47% /
/dev/hda1                   99        11        83  12% /boot
none                       248         0       248   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda3                  688       422       239  64% /home
/dev/hda2                 4920      4355       366  93% /usr
/dev/hda5                 3938      3241       498  87% /var
/dev/hda6                 2950        37      2764   2% /tmp

The problem is that I can't manage to assign all the freed space to /var . Can you suggest me the best way to proceed?

Matir · 06-28-2007, 11:49 AM

The only way to place a filesystem in a non-contiguous chunk of hard drive space is to create partitions and use either software raid (linear mode) or LVM to form a single partition.

fab_lab_99 · 06-28-2007, 12:54 PM

I had already tried with LVM. I followed these steps:

1. Create new partitions using fdisk;
2. Creating Physical Volume for each new partition, with pvcreate;
3. Creating Volume Group containing all Physical Volume, with vgcreate;

Anyway, there is a problem. During first steps (creating partitions with fdisk), I realized that the system didn't allow me to create partitions using free cylinders from 5106.599 to 12103.660, nor from 12833.173 to 24105.344 .
These cylinders are the main free space I obtained shrinking previous file systems. fdisk only allows me to create partitions from 32616.342 to 35102.997, that means after the last existing partition. But these is only a very small part of the freed space ... so, the remaining cylinders cannot be used??? It would be a waste...