Re: (newbie) / partition troubles

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003 15:56:36 -0800, John wrote
> Well I tried to move the /var directory and mount it to the new
> partition and promptly lost it.   I should not have tried Joan's 
> shell script without understanding it first.  My fault... but I was trigger
> happy and noone on the list had time to clarify it.  /var is gone 
> now. Thanks for all your help with getting the new disk up and 
> running.   Now that it is in place I can reinstall redhat in a more 
> sensible way. Moving a simple directory is so easy with windows... 
> so fatal with linux.
> 
> At least for a newbie,
> 
> john

:)

If you installed linux with a custom filesystem layout, your /var may have 
well been a filesystem, not just a directory. Moving a filesystem in 
windoh$ requires some basic dos know-how and using xcopy.

Well, in linux, things are even more complex, as you have found out. 
Getting to know the ext2 filesystem involves some basic knowledge and 
understanding of how things work. Sometimes, things are married to an 
inode, which is basically a pointer to a file. And everything in linux is 
a file, including filenames and directory names (took some time to get my 
head around that one myself). So we have inodes pointing to a file 
(directory name) that points to a file (filename) that points to a file 
(file). [kind of, this is a 10,000' overview].

By the time you feel really comfortable with working a linux box, you will 
no longer be a user. Mere users will hush in respectful silence and kowtow 
when you approach :))

Until then, you have some reading to do and a few more mistakes to make. I 
doubt that there's anyone here that hasn't done a serious fubar to a 
system or two... welcome to the club. :)