Upgrading 6.0 to 6.x... without /var

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT), jaymax <jaymax36 at gmail.com> wrote:
> You are  correct my typos, they are 
> ad0s1e and ad0s1f for /tmp and /usr respectively; /var is replaced by soft
> link
> ln -s /usr/var /var 

So the problem is /usr cannot be mounted. First of all, just try
it manually, as I mentioned (from FreeBSD live system CD or by
using FreeSBIE), e. g.

	# mount /dev/ad0s1e /mnt/usr

Because the installer does not expect /var to exist, and because
it does reside on the former / partition which is /mnt/ while
installing (as far as I remember), /var cannot be accessed. In
this case, / needs to be mounted as /mnt/ and /usr needs to be
mounted as /mnt/usr; the problem is: if /var really points at
/usr/var, then /mnt/var will point at /usr/var, too, which does
not resolve because it exists as /mnt/usr/var during the installation.

An idea would be to specify a different path in the partition
editor, but not let the installer form an /etc/fstab from this
setting.

Another idea would be to change the /var symlink on / from

	/var@ -> /usr/var

to

	/var@ -> usr/var

so that it will work when / is mounted as /mnt/; the result
will then correctly be

	/mnt/var@ -> /mnt/usr/var



> (running an email server on this box runs the risk of 'filesystem full' 
> with a 'small' restricted /var partition , this way the problem is escaped)

That's why I prefer to use "one big / partition" in such settings
where I have no chance to reliably determine the future requirements
of partition sizes. :-)





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...