Increase a new HD to the 1st HD Partition /home ?
 

hi,

i am planning to make a mailserver and was wondering what is the best option to add space to the main HD without losing data.

this is how the HD is today:
/boot - cant recall but not much 100mb something like that
/ - all the space left 740 GB
/swap - 2gb
if you have a better option to partition it let me know. There is nothing on the machine yet, i am just playing around with some options for now...

All the domains sit in /home. By default each domain can have up to 20 mailbox each one with 3GB of space so considering this i might run out of space pretty fast as we do have a lot of clients.

So i would like to know what would be the best option to increase my /home partition or the / with new HD's what steps should i know, how should i procced with this kinda of idea ...

i am using centOS 4.4 algo got 5.x.

Thanks in advance...

First, don't use up the entire disk space unless you are really sure what the configuration is going to be. It is much easier to add partitions than to re-size them.

If nothing is on the machine, then just delete the existing partitions and setup the way you want. I recommend getting a bootable CD partition tool such as GParted. This also will re-size existing partitions.

Be sure to back up any important data before re-sizing a partition.

Look at LVM. It will make your life much easier for tasks like this in the future. Right now, you'll need to add the hard drive, format it (possibly setup for LVM), copy the exisiting /home, and then mount as /home.

So in a short term i cannot just add a new HD to an already existent partition without having to backup and format it, then copy it back ?

i think i will have to change the way i will handle accounts then... like home, home2, home3, and so on...

thanks, i was also reading about LVM... but i was in doubt about this kinda of feature i wanted to acomplish...

A partition is a subset of a disk--you could think of it as a "zone". You can't add disks or partitions to each other. You can control how they work together using RAID or LVM.

You CAN add partitions (including ones on new drives) to the existing directory tree.

LVM allows you to assign several partitions (physical volumes in LVM speak) into a single VolumeGroup. At any time, you can create logical volumes out of the space of this volume group and even extend logical volumes. Combined with a resizing-capable filesystem (I like jfs because it can resize while running, but ext3 works too) you can then add space as needed.

LVM was designed to allow you to add space when needed.

Thank you for the reply could you recommend me or give me some examples on how should i partition my HD in order to give the /home a way to grow with new HD's.

i was searching for LVM but i found many how-tos there were very advanced to what i was looking for.

i am running centos 4.x but can move to 5.x

Thank you in advance.

Only one partition can be meaningfully mounted to a directory (mount point). (Each mount hides the previous one).

You can't use multiple partitions/disks to expand the size of a single directory without using something like LVM.

You COULD make several sub-directories in /home and mount each one to a different partition. Kludgy, but completely feasible.

actually this is the last thing i am planning to go trhu:
/home, /home2, /home3 and so on.

This is setted as a last option right now because i already know i can acomplish it.

Matir thank for your explanation and to everyone that helped me out i found some good material regarding LVM on rhel web-site and from non-pratical i have came with those commands to acomplish my needs:
i did not tested it yet but would like to know if i am on the right path ?

i would like to be able to make / the grow partition adminitrated by the LVM because i am planning on having 2 things that will grow to such i do not know where it will stop. MySQL and the mailserver itself.

today i have my system installed like this:
it would be better for to re-install using LVM or it is fine to do it after it is already installed ?

should i change any of the partition table i am current using ?

thanks everyone.