UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

The server I inherited has a root partition at 98% capacity. I am curious about moving /usr to another partition to free up some space (1.1GB).
Is it possible to just mv /usr to another slice and create a symbolic link from /usr to the new location and have everything work as it had in its original location?

FYI: SunOS 5.9

You have to be careful which directories are on which file system as during boot up the OS will only have access to the root file system until it starts mounting the others, which is a good reason why /bin and /usr/bin are different directories on some systems with /bin being a subset of /usr/bin.

If you get it wrong you then end up with a system that won't boot. Typically the ones you would put on different slices are /var, /opt, /export.

I would recommend trying it on a test system.

You could. You will need to take the system to single user for this (if you run mv /usr /somewhere/else in multiuser...). So as porter suggested, test it well first so that you know exactly what you need to do during the limited downtime.

Also, there is no need to do stuff like linking /usr anywhere else. Just mount the new slice under /usr.

Does the new location have to actually be a slice called /usr, or can it be moved to /whereever with a symbolic link to /whereever called /usr?

thanks.

As long as

(a) there is enough on root for the OS to begin the boot up sequence

(b) there is enough information in /etc/vfstab to mount the volume

/usr does not have to be it's own partition, but remember /usr is *heavily* used and you would be forcing every path name resolving in /usr to follow a symbolic link.