[NTLUG:Discuss] Software RAID using file "device"?

[Stuart Johnston]

The way the data is layed out there is not one directory of appoximately 
the right size that I could copy.  Since I'm not finding other 
solutions, I will probably test to see if soft links will work in this 
application and then pick serveral directories to copy.

Thanks,
Stuart


Burton Strauss wrote:
> How about just using a link.  Pick one large directory on the stuffed
> partition and move it's contents to a directory on the partition that has
> space.  Then create a soft link (ln -sf ) from the new location to the old.
> 
> It should be transparent to just about everything, except for a few tools
> that explicitly don't follow links.
> 
> 
> -----Burton 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
> Of Stuart Johnston
> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 7:47 PM
> To: NTLUG Discussion List
> Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] Software RAID using file "device"?
> 
> I have a server with two partitions, / and /home (not the best setup, I
> know).  The /home partition is coming very close to running out of disk
> space and I am trying to figure out a way to use some of the extra space on
> / without requiring a trip down to the data center.  This would only need to
> be a temporary solution.
> 
> When I setup the system, I didn't worry too much about the partition setup
> because I was using LVM, which I thought would allow me to easily
> re-allocate the partitions as needed.  It turns out not to be quite so easy
> since you can't generally resize an ext3 partition while it is mounted.
> 
> I was thinking about how in Linux, devices are treated like files and you
> can often use them interchangeably.  So, if I created a file on / then I
> could use it as a device in mdadm or lvm to combine linearly with the /home
> partition (which can be unmounted and resized remotely). 
> Unfortuntately, neither mdadm nor lvm seem to be willing to work with a
> non-block device.
> 
> Any suggestions on how to make this work?
> 
> thanks,
> Stuart Johnston
> 
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