I am running out of room on the partitions /var and /usr are on, on a SLES10 SP2 server. I want to add a larger LV disk group, with bigger partitions, and move the folders/mount points there. No, I can't resize the existing MP's in this scenario - the disk doesn't have free space, and I do not want to JBOD the LV disk group just to gain space to do the resize - I want to move them to a clean set of larger LV partitions on one contiguous VMware virtual disk on my iSCSI SAN, iin a single LV disk group.
So, The Question is: how do you relocate /var and /usr from existing separate partitions/mount points to new, separate partitions?
Please, do not even bother suggesting expansion of the LV disk group, as that is not the question. Focus on relocating mount points and their data from one physical device to another.
If I create temporary mount points on the new partition and CP the files over, then mess around with renaming the mount points, it can result in an inoperable system, at least at higher runlevels. I will likely at least be able to boot to RL1 or 3 and mess around with it from the CL until I get any issues resolved, but it doesn't give me warm-fuzzies.
Would it make sense to try to CP it all to the aforementioned temporary mount points and then generate symlinks to the new temp mount points overwriting all the real files in the original mount points, before doing the rename of the mount points in LVM? Or is there a "best practices" way to accomplish this?
Would it be better, for instance, to boot it from maybe like a Knoppix image or a "live trial" SLES image (if there is one) or maybe the install DVD iso in "repair" mode, mount the original and new partitions, run cp to get the files/links from the old partition to the new one, and then mount the root partition to change \etc\fstab to point to the new partitions for the mount points? Can I work with LVM tools from outside the LV partition's host environment, or do I even have to?
Also, there are a bunch of symlinks in /var, IIRC. Just to refresh my memory, to copy the symlinks as links, recursively, with ownership/rights attributes I'd use -dpR or -a on my cp command, right?
