[Novalug] unlikely question

Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com
Tue Jan 27 11:33:00 EST 2009


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:24:37AM -0500, Peter Larsen wrote:
> Well - it's possible. Depending on your current configuration it may be
> easier or harder. The "easiest" way is to add another drive, add it to
> your volume group and create your home logical volume. Format it, then
> copy everything from the existing /home to your new volume. Switch the
> fstab entry to your new volume (rename the old /home directory
> to /home-old), reboot and your should be set. You can then delete the
> old /home-old directory and content.
> 
> If you cannot add another drive, you first must make room for the new
> volume. Using LVM makes this "easy" - at least compared to not using
> LVM. Reduce the size of the existing volumes (this assumes you have
> room), add a new logical volume for home, format it and do the copy as
> above. Before you boot, rename the existing /home to /home-old and
> reboot (remember to create an empty /home for mount point). Once back,
> you can safely remove the /home-old and free up the space.
> 
> Complications comes in if you're not using a volume manager. If you're
> not, I would migrate to a volume manager while you're at it. This would
> require a backup device, like a USB disk. Basically, you'll copy/backup
> everything off to your USB, then boot into recovery mode. You'll then
> create your volumes (this erases ALL data on your system). Create
> the /home logical volume too, format everything and then restore from
> backup. Update /etc/fstab, /boot/grub and initrd to reflect the new
> mount-points and reboot. You should be operational again, with a
> separate home mount point (and volume management). Once back, make sure
> you do the vgcfg-backup to setup recovery information about your LVM.

Good, detailed explanations.

> Trying to resize partitions is a nightmare I wouldn't wish on my enemy.
> It should be avoided.

Yeah, without LVM this is a great way to kill an afternoon... or your
system if you're not careful.  With LVM, there's even a GUI interface
to make things slideably easy. :-)

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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