Re: splitting root partition into root, usr, var etc.

[Andrew Clausen]

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 12:22:52PM +0100, Sven Hartrumpf wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> We have some Linux boxes (SuSE 7.2 and 8.1) sitting around that do not have
> separate partitions for /, /usr, /var etc. :
> 
> > df
> /dev/hde3     ext2    9.8G  7.5G  1.9G  80% /
> /dev/hde1     ext2     99M  9.7M   83M  11% /boot
> /dev/hde4     ext2     26G   24G  1.3G  95% /home
> 
> (parted) print                                                            
> Disk geometry for /dev/hde: 0.000-39266.718 megabytes
> Disk label type: msdos
> Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
> 1          0.031    101.975  primary   ext2        boot
> 2        101.975   2157.165  primary   linux-swap  
> 3       2157.166  12401.740  primary   ext2        
> 4      12401.741  39260.412  primary   ext2        
> 
> 1. To avoid/reduce critical data losses when the machine crashes without 
> cleanly
>    unmounting, such additional partitions are recommended. And from my own
>    experience, this seems to be very true.  Is there a recommended partition
>    scheme - in terms of partition contents (and filesystem types and maybe
>    distribution on 2 disks and partition sizes)?

You want to use ext3.  Journalling minimizes data loss.

You can convert to ext3 with tune2fs.

> 2. Has anybody tested/documented a safe method to split "/" in a way described
>    above?  (Without reinstalling, of course.)

Yes and no.  There aren't any simple point-and-click methods, though.
You can use convertfs, but this is really only targetted at experienced
users / hackers.  (Yes, we should incorporate this into parted, but
it isn't really obvious how this should be done)

You can find out more about convertfs here:

        http://members.optusnet.com.au/clausen/ideas/convertfs

Cheers,
Andrew