I'm trying to rationalise space by moving my /var directory from its own partition to /, as currently there's a lot of wastage. I've copied /var to /newvar with rsync, and now want to mount /newvar as /var on reboot by creating an entry in /etc/fstab. This is it (using /var-tst for testing):
/newvar /var-tst ext4 loop 0 0
but I'm getting:
mount: /var-tst: failed to setup loop device for /newvar.
/var-tst exists, so that's the problem? The man page for mount states that it will create the necessary /dev loopback device if it isn't specified. Currently there are no loopback devices in the system, and the loop kernel module is loaded.
poc
PS Suggestions on how to move /var without all this jiggery-pokery are also welcome.