Resizing /var

[David Banning]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 03:43:07PM +0200, ptitoliv wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> I have a big problem on a FreeBSD 5.3 Box. It is an hosted server
> installed by an hosting service. But I didn't know what they smoke when
> they have installed the system but they sized the /var filesystem only
> to 200 MB which is not sufficient for my needs.
> 
> I used an emergency solution which was to transfer some datas on /usr
> like databases but I am afraid that the problem will come back. So I am
> asking here if there is any solution to transfer free space from ./usr
> to /var.
> 
> But there are some constraints :
> 
> - I have no free unpartitioned space available
> - I can't format any partition because and I can't loose datas

I ran into the same problem. I just symlinked to /usr for the 
following directories;

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root    wheel     11 Feb 10 00:05 db -> /usr/var/db
lrwxrwxr-x  1 root    mail       9 Nov 24  2003 mail -> /usr/mail
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root    wheel     11 Aug 26  2003 spool -> /usr/spool/

I don't know what risks I am running here, but I have been running this
way for years - when I purchase a new drive I will creat a larger /var
and copy all from the old drive. Considering how cheap drives are, that
may be your easiest solution.