How can I repartition my drive?

[Jerry McAllister]

On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 10:33:54AM +0300, Abdullah Al-Marrie wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> How can I repartition my drive? I already have the hd dedicated for
> FreeBSD and 6.2-RC1 is installed.
> 
> Is there away to make /var ..etc without reinstalling the OS?

Well, I don't know what you mean by making /var ..etc, but there
are things to do if you need to move some things to shift them
to where there is more space.   For this you do not repartition,
but just move certain directory trees and then make symbolic links.

Here is an example.   Let's say you have a typical setup with one
large /home file system that has lots of spare space, but you have
begun to fill /var because you have lots of stuff in /var/log and /var/spool.
So, you want to move the contents of /var/log and /var/spool in to
the /home space where they have room to grow.   Do something like this:

(While logged in as root - or booted to single user [preferred])
  cd /var/log 
  tar cvpf /home/log.tar *
  cd /var/spool
  tar cvpf /home/spool.tar *
  cd /home
  mkdir var.log
  mkdir var.spool
  cd var.log
  tar xvf ../log.tar
  cd ../var.spool
  tar xvf ../spool.tar
  cd /var
  mv log log-old
  ln -s /home/var.log log
  mv spool spool-old
  ln -s /home/var.spool spool

Now, just check things out to make sure it is all OK.
  cd /var/log
  pwd             (should display /home/var.log)
  ls              (should have the right stuff for log in it)
  cd /var/spool  
  pwd             (should display /home/var.spool)
  ls              (should have the right stuff for spool in it)

If all is well, clean up.
  cd /var
  rm -rf log-old
  rm -fr spool-old
  cd /home
  rm log.tar
  rm spool.tar

That will leave space in /var and give log and spool to work
The same type of thing can be done with other directories in overloaded
file systems if you have room for them elsewhere.  Just don't do it for
some things like /etc or /sbin that need to stay in root.

There is something called growfs, but it is only useful if you have
empty unallocated space right next to the partition you want to expand.
That is rarely the case.   Most people put one partition right after
the other without leaving wasted space in between.

There are also some other utilities that claim to be able to mush FreeBSD 
(as well as other types) partitions around, but I have not heard much about 
them.   Most disk partition management utilities actually work on Microsoft 
partitions which are what FreeBSD calls slices.   They do not know anything
about FreeBSD partitions - which are actually subdivisions of slices.

So, if you do not have the room to do the move and symlink process I
describe above, then, you are probably needing to look at buying larger
disk.

Happy disk management,

////jerry
  
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Abdullah
> Arab Portal
> http://www.WeArab.Net/
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