[Novalug] questions on re-assining /var and /tmp

[Bonnie Dalzell]

On Thu, 26 Nov 2009, Jon LaBadie wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:45:56PM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 09:19:08PM -0500, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
>>>
>>> when I set this current harddisk up i made assignments of / /var and
>>> /tmp to separate partitions. I gave them much to much room and I would
>>> like to reassign /var /tmp to the / partition. Other than going through
>>> with a reinstall of the system from a CD, is there a straightforward way
>>> to reassign these?
>>>
>>
>
> Whoops, on re-reading your question I probably overlooked a major
> part of what you probably want to do.  I presume you want to assign
> the space now allocated to the /var and /tmp filesystems to the
> root filesystem.  All my suggestions did were to get your data
> to the root filesystem and stop using the other fs's.
>

Actually I want to use those two partitions for something else so 
if I can get /var and /tmp to point back to the partition 
designated as / I will reformat them and mount them elsewhere.

I tried commenting out the fstab line for /tmp last night and then 
rebooting and got a broken system but was able to boot into a command line 
mode and replace the edited fstab with its renamed .bak 
file.

Guess I need to download a current Knoppix iso and work off it.

Incidently Ubuntu now sets fstab up with these nasyt assignment lines that 
look like this:

#Entry for /dev/sda8 :
UUID=be9d8546-17ea-4f34-901c-ccdb66b30195       /tmp    ext3    relatime 
0       2

If you do not have the correct funny number after UUID then the partition 
does not mount.

I have two sxt2 partitions on my external USB back up drive that I do not 
have permission to mount on boot now since an Ubuntu upgrade put the funny 
numbers in my fstab. The FAT partitions on the same drive still mount. 
Part of the reclaiming space from /tmp and /var was to get some space I 
could copy stuff to from the external drive prior to fiddling around with 
it. I think I can mount the ext2's by hand but I was trying to solve the 
/var and /tmp reassign first.

Any thoughts on this matter?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
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