Re: (newbie) / partition troubles

On Mon Mar 03 2003 at 15:56, "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.

It is just as trivial for linux.  If you know what you are doing.

Although with /var you have some special issues because a box
running at runlevel 2 or higher is using many files in /var (eg, in
/var/run/ /var/log/ etc).  You have to go to runlevel "single" to
move it cleanly.  You may also have to deal with partitions, often
/var is in one of its own.

As someone else said, "copy then verify then delete" is a good
policy for most situations.

> At least for a newbie,

Try using midnight commander (/usr/bin/mc) as your file manager, it
works in a console/xterm window and is highly extensible and
customisable.  It also makes a great file viewer and ftp client.

But still, be careful, you can do a lot of damage with it too...
while it is a very powerful tool, the power is in the hands of the
user.  Learn to use it properly before attempting to do "serious"
things with it.

> john

Cheers
Tony