Hi Colin,
> Sorry if this is a bit of a noob question ... but I need to reduce the
> size of my /var and add it to the /home.
>
> This is just a temp solution whilst we organise some bigger drives, but
> it will solve the immediate problem.
>
> I have seen a friend do this by typing furiously at the CLI but haven't
> done it myself, particularly on an active server!
Uuuuh. You don't want to do that. Trust me. :o)
There are filesystems like XFS which can be resized with great ease during
runtime - if you take a few precautions.
BlueQuartz uses EXT3 instead, which makes that task a lot more tricky. If you
really want to do it, here is a good how to:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/resizing-ext3-partitions-with-parted
http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_resizing_ext3_partitions
But it's really NOT trivial - especially not if you are using software RAID.
So for especially for a temporary solution I wouldn't touch this, as it's a
lot more work than to run to the store, grab a SATA disk and an USB enclosure
for it and to connect that to the server via USB. 500 Gig drive (~65 EUR),
SATA enclosure (~25-40 EUR) and it's something portable that you can re-use
for a lot of other things as well once its served its task.
Another temporary (!!!) fix could be this: If you have another server in the
same physical location with some disk space left, then you could either
re-locate some unused data over the network and stored it on the 2nd box. Or
you could use a network share (NFS or Samba) to create additional storage
space on the 2nd box and make that available for the server that runs out of
space.
BUT: NFS shouldn't be used unless it happens behind a firewall (don't discard
this advice lightly!) and Samba also has a couple of pitfalls for stuff like
this, which are - to a minor degree - related to security. The primary issue
is performance and UID/atime/permissions, which could lead to quite a few
show stopping problems. Depends on what you want to write onto the mounted
Samba share.
Of course the best long term solution (requires a reinstall) is to rebuild the
box with bigger HDs.
--
With best regards,
Michael Stauber
http://www.solarspeed.net