shrinking root partition and using free space to create a block device


 
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Operating Systems Linux shrinking root partition and using free space to create a block device
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Old 02-03-2009
shrinking root partition and using free space to create a block device

We are intending to protect a set of user specified files using LVM mirroring where the protected space on which the user files are stored is mirrored on an LV on a different disk. Our problem is that for a user with a custom layout has installed linux with 2 partitons for swap and / and there is no other space available on the primary disk where we can store the files to be protected tht is mirrored across other disk, so we intend to allocate some space on the primary disk that can be used as a LV that is mirrored across an LV on different disk.
What can be done in this situation?
For now we thought of the following:
1> Shrinking the root partition to get some unallocated space that can be used to create a PV.
problems :
a. How do u do it? Can gparted be used online without the live CD?
b. How much can the root be compressed without the OS failure?
2> Can the root partition be converted into a LV?
3> There is free space on the root partition. Now can we use this free space to create a block device that can be converted into PV that would contain my protected files mirrored across other LV on a different disk. If so how can we do it?
Can anyone help me with this?
Thanks a lot.
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invcutter(1)						      General Commands Manual						      invcutter(1)

Name
       invcutter - generate subset inventory files

Syntax
       /usr/sys/dist/invcutter [ -d ] [ -f root-path ] [ -f version-code ]

Description
       The  command  reads master inventory records from standard input.  A subset inventory record is written to standard output for every record
       read from the input. The information contained in the output record is derived from the input record and the file attribute information	in
       the file hierarchy rooted in the current directory.

Options
       -d		   Enable debugging. No useful diagnostics are printed.

       -f root-path	   Specify an alternate root path for finding file attribute information.

       -v version-code	   Specify a 3-digit version code for use in the version field of the output records. The default version code is 010.

Restrictions
       All input records must be sorted in ascending order on the pathname field.

       Files described in an input record which exist as sockets in the file hierarchy are not processable.

       If a file is described in an input record has a link count greater than 1, all other links to the file must be represented in the input.

Examples
       The following command will generate inventory records for the master inventory entries in PDS020.mi containing version fields set to 020:
	   invcutter -v 020 < PDS020.mi

Return Values
       An exit status of 0 is returned if all goes well. An exit status of 1 is returned if an error occurs. See Diagnostics.

Diagnostics
       "cannot chdir to pathname (error-message)"
       The  program  cannot  change  directories to the pathname directory specified with the -f option. The error-message will provide additional
       information.

       "sort error, record #n"
       The nth input record is not in the correct sort order. All input records must be in ascending  ASCII  colating  sequence  on  the  pathname
       field.

       "cannot stat filename (error-message)"
       An error has occurred attempting to read the attributes of filename.  The error-message explains exactly what happened.

       "pathname: illegal file type code 0140000"
       The file pathname is a socket. Sockets are not supported as valid file types for distribution.

       "unresolved nlink n: pathname"
       This indicates that file pathname in the master inventory is linked to n files which do not appear in the master inventory. Check inventory
       for validity with the program.

       "n unresolved hard links"
       This is an informational message stating how many files were detected in the input inventory which had unresolved links.

See Also
       newinv(1), stl_inv(5), stl_mi(5)
       Guide to Preparing Software for Distribution on ULTRIX Systems

																      invcutter(1)