moving the /etc folder after install?

[jakerman999]

I've been setting up a media server on a an actual server machine I picked up dirt cheap, and had it running xUbuntu fine. gave it a 5gig root directory, 5gig swap partiton, and three 34gig storage drives. Everything was running smoothly.

Just recently I learned that the 5gig's dedicated to running my operating system of choice, aren't enough to install all the software I wanted(I might be just a little greedy). The first logical step to correcting this problem was to move /etc to one of the storage drives and create a link were it was, but not being entirely sure how xUbuntu would take that, I thought I'd get an expert opinion.

Thoughts or alternative suggestions?

p.s. The thread prefix is "all variants" because I have installed the desktops for kUbuntu and just plain Ubuntu on this machine(what I meant by being a little greedy).

[Barriehie]

Nm!

[diesch]

/etc is needed during the boot process before any partion other than / gets mounted so it needs to stay on the root partition. As it isn't big it doesn't make much sense to move it anyway.

Better move /usr or /var to a bigger disk.

@Barriehie: /etc/ has to be there for /etc/fstab to be read by the system so it's to late to include it there.

[jakerman999]

/etc is needed during the boot process before any partion other than / gets mounted so it needs to stay on the root partition. As it isn't big it doesn't make much sense to move it anyway.

Better move /usr or /var to a bigger disk.


I was under the impression that /etc was where programs and packages were installed to, and that is currently what's taking most of my 5gigs of space(nothing in the home directory).

Edit: checked in the properties, and found that /var is indeed larger than /etc. Roughly 100x larger actually. So how exactly does one go about moving that?

[Barriehie]

/etc is needed during the boot process before any partion other than / gets mounted so it needs to stay on the root partition. As it isn't big it doesn't make much sense to move it anyway.

Better move /usr or /var to a bigger disk.

@Barriehie: /etc/ has to be there for /etc/fstab to be read by the system so it's to late to include it there.

Makes sense! I've edited my post thank you!

OP; I've moved my /var and it's right about 300 megs, /etc is right about 40 megs.

[diesch]

/etc/ is for config files and such. On my system it's 32MByte... Usually most system files are in /usr/.

You can use e.g. baobab to see how much space each folder takes.

[jakerman999]

So how would I go about moveing my /var folder without damaging my system?

[Barriehie]

So how would I go about moveing my /var folder without damaging my system?

Here's the way I did it. I had booted from the subergrub LiveCD since I was making the swap larger and in that extended partition I created another partition about 4 gigabytes in size. Gparted assigned it /dev/hda6. I then did a normal boot and su'ed to root.
Now: (Note that your fs type may/may not be ext3 - depends on how you formatted it)


mkdir ./varr
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda6 ./varr
rsync -av /var ./varr
Just to be sure next I cd'ed into ./varr and made sure it looked like /var
Then:


umount /dev/hda6
rm -rf ./varr
Next I used nano, any editor will do, to add this line to my fstab file:


/dev/hda6 /var ext3 rw,auto,user,exec 0 2

Now reboot. Only thing I can recommend doing different from what I did is to check the permissions on the /var folder and files before editing /etc/fstab. My /var dir is mounted at boot time for read/write, auto-mount, any user can mount, and programs can run from there. Maybe not necessary to have the exec flag but better safe than sorry and it worked!

HTH,
Barrie

[jakerman999]

Nearly broke my install with that one. The dummy currently sitting in my seat had copied /var to the /var/var folder of the new drive, but got it figured out in the end.

I'm looking at my hard drive space, and seeing that I haven't gained any space from moving /var. I'm guessing that the folder is still there, just hidden by the mount. If so, how would I remove it?

[efflandt]

You should have made the changes by booting from some other system or Ubuntu live CD. Although, you have to be careful then because the var you would be working with would not be /var, it would be /media/something/var and destination would have been /media/something-else/var.

After you copied the files to the other location, you should have recursively removed files from the old var.

If you used fstab to /var, you could probably still see the old /var directory by booting Ubuntu live CD (since it would not use that fstab). Just be aware that it will be /media/something/var from there. You still need that empty var as a mount point.

Be very careful about using wildcards for rm, because recursively removing * could also remove everything in ".." (parent directory). Always test any file definitions that contain * using ls -al whatever first.

[jakerman999]

Booted into a live cd and cleared /var (to avoid the wildcard I launched gksudo nautilus) then initiated a reboot. Once again I found myself trapped in the recovery console trying to figure out what I did wrong. Three hours, can't find a thing wrong with my system so I give up and shut it down for the night.

This morning when I booted it up, everything's fine. what in the name of hades happened? I've run a system diagnosis and everything appears fine, so I guess it's running smoothly again. Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

[Barriehie]

muted...what in the name of hades happened?...muted

'Bout like my kernel upgrade yesterday. Shut it down this AM and when I booted after work grub had all the partitions wrong and then I couldn't remember how to 'sudo' via the livdCD. Got it figured and booting. I think it's time to quit 'updating' the box that works.