PARTED Questions in Red Hat, post-installation
 

Hello all,

I am fairly new to Linux and it would seem that I have made a boo-boo. I have a network of MS Windows XP and 2000 machines, and the server is a RH 8.0 Pro box. This server runs my sendmail, DNS, Samba, etc. A few days ago, in the MS Outlook clients for e-mail, I started getting messages saying:

Task 'goliath - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC78) : 'Unable to send the message. Please verify the e-mail address in your account properties. The server responded: 452 4.4.5 Insufficient disk space; try again later'

Goliath is the hostname of the RH server. Now, it turns out that I have indeed run out of space (as you will see). I deleted some logs to gain back some space on a temporary solution, but I need a more permanent one. "df -h" gives me this output:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 4.8G 4.6G 1.4M 100% /
/dev/hda3 107G 21G 80G 21% /home
none 377M 0 376M 0% /dev/shm

Unfortunately, when I installed Linux, you can see that I only made 2 mount points, / and /home. I believe that what I need to do is shrink down the /home partition by 20G and create 2 new mounted partitions, /var and /etc. I would like /var to be 15GB and /etc to be 5GB. Should I also create a /boot partition of 100MB or so? Now, like I said, this is a server, so this needs to be done without harming it at all! From what I have heard, I can do all of this with a command called "parted" if I reboot the server with install CD 1. I have never even used parted, and I certainly do not know how to use it. I have rebooted the server and gotten to the parted command, but once I got there, I became overwhelmed. That is why I am writing for your help now.

Please, is there anyone who could walk me through this like I am a five year old? Like I said, I am fairly new to Linux and am learning as I go, but the biggest problem is that if something goes wrong with the server, I lose internet and e-mail access, and that is not good. I need this to go smoothly, and I am more than willing to put aside any pride and let the masters help me. The one problem you should all know is that I do NOT have a working tape backup (or any means of backup) yet. I have a DLT drive coming, but it is not here yet, so I cannot afford to screw up the system with parted. Can anyone please help me out? I would be most grateful! Thank you in advance.

Chris

you can read all about parted in this documentation


PARTED


parted is a shell application. but dont get awed by it. read the documentation and you will be fine.

you would be better off by making more partitions.

you already have / and /home

/var for all the logs and mails
/usr for all the applications
/etc for the configuration files

and better make a swap partition double the size of your RAM

all the best

Thanks, man.

I have read the documentation and I really am quite frightened by this. I will check out the site you posted. You live in Fairfax? My Grandmother lives on Annandale Road in Falls Church. We've prolly run into each other.

Chris

maybe we did, small world and all:p