[thelist] linux server redistribute disk space

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Richard Bennett wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have remote root access to our Linux Redhat 7.1 server, and could use some
> advice:
>
> Our disk looks like this:
>
> Filesystem           1k-blocks       Used     Available   Use%  Mounted on
> /dev/hda5             381139      244083       117378    68%    /
> /dev/hda1               46636           5955         38273    14%    /boot
> /dev/hda3        17781232       120864  16757116    1%      /home
> none                     256416                  0       256416    0%
> /dev/shm
> /dev/hdb1        18982764     1258876  16759588    7%      /usr
> /dev/hdb2             256665       236623           6789     98%   /var
>
> Our webserver is on var/www/htdocs, but /var has run out of space.
> I'm trying to upload 500 megs of PDFs to the server.
>
> Is it possible to redistribute diskspace from /home to /var, without loosing
> data?
> Alternatively, can I put my pdfs on /home, and create a link from /var so
> they are visible from the web?

Since this is Linux and not one of the BSDs, you can use GNU Parted to
resize the filesystems. However, this typically should be done at the
console, especially when e.g. /var is involved.

I, personally, would take about 1-2 gigabytes off of /usr first (you have
an obscene amount of free space there) and seperate that into a new
filesystem for /var/www. Then do something like 'mv www www0', 'mount
/var/www', and then 'cp -a www0/* www'.

Yes, you can make /var/www a seperate filesystem. You can even make a
seperate filesystem for each site (up to, I think, 16 or 32 partitions on
one disk).

As an alternative, if getting to the console to do this is not feasible,
you could symlink to somewhere under /home. However, you have space under
/usr so a much more straightforward solution would be to move /var/www to
/usr/local/www if you need a "quick fix".

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn