var out of space

[James Long]

> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:31:58 -0800
> From: Bradley Giesbrecht <brad at pixilla.com>
> Subject: var out of space
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <00190780-C6FE-42DB-9AD8-5D985625545F at pixilla.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
> 
> Hello,
> 
> 
> I inherited a freebsd installation with a var slice/mount that is to  
> small and filling up all the time.
> 
> What type of info should I provide to allow someone to help me with a  
> solution?
> 
> I would very much prefer to not install another drive just for /var.
> 
> /usr has plenty of space. Can I mount var off of /usr?

Here is a slightly simpler solution than what Anders proposed that 
may work for you.

Find out which sub-directories of /var are the disk space consumers:

du -d1 /var | sort -rn | head

That will list the top ten.  This method assumes you have only one
or two large directories, and that moving them would yield
a substantial reduction in /var disk space usage.

Let's assume that /var/log and /var/db are the top two directories.

Shutdown to single-user mode.  Stop any daemons like syslog, sendmail,
etc. that might write to /var/log or /var/db, since you will be working
with those two directories.

cd into /var and move the log sub-directory onto the /usr mount point,
and then create a symlink to make /var/log redirect to the new location
on /usr:

cd /var
mv log /usr/var-log
ln -s /usr/var-log log

Repeat for /var/db:

mv db /usr/var-db
ln -s /usr/var-db db

Reboot.

This procedure eliminates the need to mess with your disklabel or your 
fstab.

BTW, it looks like your / partition is a bit crowded, also. :)


Jim