Reorganize file systems in ISC 2.2?

[Norman Kohn]

In article <528 at jahangir.UUCP> marc at jahangir.UUCP (Marc Rossner) writes:
>My problem is that now I would like to put the root and /usr filesystems
>on the second disk (because it is twice as big as the first and I need
>the space under /usr for software that automatically looks there).
>
>
>The COMBINED space on disk0 is just about right for a single /usr/spool
>filesystem for my news articles (which now live on disk1), but the
>size of the current /usr is too small, so I need to coalesce disk0 into
>a single file system.
>
>Anyone have any suggestions about how to do this smoothly?  As far as I can
>see I'll have to reinstall the whole system from the original ISC disks 
>(after switching the disk order on hardware) and then reload my stuff.  Any
>way to do this without starting with a clean machine?

Yes, but you may find it's not worth the trouble.
1) BACK UP.  At least: back up enough to let you play with
the partitions on your larger drive.
2) In the situation you describe, you really should make your larger
drive drive0.
3) Delete, using mkpart, the first partition or two on your larger
drive (you did back everything up,didn't you? Did you check that
the backups are readable?)
4) create new root and /usr partitions on drive1.  (mkpart, mkfs, labelit)
Write the boot block, using mkpart.  Copy root and /usr to the new partitions,
using cpio.  Look at the INSTALL script on the boot floppy.
5) Take everything apart, make this drive drive0, and see if you can boot.
6) Put things back together, create/populate the other partitions as needed.

This approach requires care, time, good backups, and spare disk capacity.
While you're at it, consider adding swap space on the new drive1.

If you plan carefully, the only one of the distribution floppies that
you'll need is the boot floppy; and, if you're really lucky and careful,
you may be able to avoid having to boot from floppy in this exercise.


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Norman Kohn   		| ...ddsw1!nvk
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