Chris wrote:
I read that also however, I have a question about it. In the example I read (by Doug White) he used /usr/home as the point of reference. The question I have is this, what becomes of the space left over on the 1st drive now that /usr/home has been effectively moved?
Can you merge this in someplace else? Say /swap or /var?
If you mount the new partition from your new disk at /usr/home, then anything under /usr/home *on the old disk* will become inaccessible, and just take up space to no purpose. But you knew that anyhow.
So, after you've copied your original /usr/home data onto the new partition, you should delete those contents from the old partition -- and that will have exactly the effect you'ld expect on the available space in the old partition.
You can't arbitrarily shave bits off one partition and add them to another one -- at least, not without going through a great deal of rigmarole: backing everything up, booting from separate media if necessary, deleting all of the affected partitions, recreating them in the required size and restoring the backups. Note that 'affected partitions' will include those located on disk between the partition you're expanding and the one you're contracting: in order to shift them over a few cylinders, you will have to delete them, go through all of the gubbins to recreate each of them in their new positions and then restore the contents from backup. You probably don't want to have to do all that.
However, you can add a swapfile on the emptied partition: see mdconfig(8) for details (vnconfig(8) if you're using 4.x).
Otherwise you can effectively map chunks of /usr/home into /var by adroit use of sym-links. However this is not particularly recommended: it goes against the reason for actually having a separate /var partition in the first place, and symbolic link-trees are too prone to silly things like not getting backed up properly, or inadvertently causing you to try and write to a non-mounted partition.
The installer does rather tempt you into making a large number of partitions all over the place, but that temptation should be resisted unless you have good solid reasons for splitting up your disks. In general, the rule of thumb is a small number of large partitions will serve you better than a large number of small partitions. Partitioning schemes and disk layout are the sort things that sysadmins love to argue infinitesimally all the whys and wherefores of -- but note that for a home system just having *two* partitions on a drive (ie. swap + everything else) will work very well indeed, and save you from having to worry about partition juggling at all. Although that layout is certainly not the right solution in all circumstances. See the archives of this list for many, many arguments on the pros and cons of that and other partitioning schemes.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 8 Dane Court Manor
School Rd
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Tilmanstone
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