UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I was just wondering what is the best way to merge partitions on a disk. I am running Solaris 8 and have two mirrored disks (Solstice Disk Suite). Say my /local partition is 4gb and I have a /local2 partition of 2gb. My question is can I increase the size of the /local partition using some of the free space in /local2 or do I need to delete the /local2 partition altogether, and how are both these scenarios achieved?

Thanks in Advance

The easiest way is to have another partition that is free and clear. Then use tar to put everything you want on it.

Veritas Volume manager would be able to 'merge' the two on the fly, but DiskSuite is not very well suited for that.

Another option (not recommended but still an option) is to create a link from one to the other (ln -s /local2/newdir /local/newdir) which will place your info onto the /local2 which has more space available.

The reason it isn't recommended - we have a server that many system admins started running soft links on - at the time, they needed to move things around due to lack of space. Well, it ended up that /opt/OV/log pointed to /export/home/log, which pointed to /var/OV/logs, which pointed to /opt/logs. It seems at one time or another, space was needed on the different partitions (/opt, /export/home, /var) and these files were moved around until they ended up on the original partition.