sym link question...

[Paul Howarth]

James Wilkinson wrote:
> bruce wrote:
> 
>>i have a question regarding symlinks. i have my system partitioned
>>
>>/dev/hda5    100 /
>>/dev/hda1    10000 /home
>>/dev/hda2    30000 /usr
>>
>>is it possible to create a symlink that would allow '/' to point to
>>/usr/root. i'm inclined to think you can't but i'm not knowledgeable about
>>the concept of symlinks within linux....
> 
> 
> You have had a couple of very good explanations of why this is not
> possible. Now let's take a look at why you're trying to do this.
> 
> I suspect the subtext is that you're running out of space on /. One
> thing you can do is to put /var under /usr and symlink /var to usr/var.
> 
> I'd recommend a relative symlink here: don't put / at the beginning of
> usr/var when you're creating the symlink. That way it should still point
> to the same place when something like anaconda mounts it during system
> upgrade.
> 
> You'll have to do this while as little as possible is running. You could
> try booting into run level 1, but the rescue CD would be better: that
> way *nothing* from your Fedora install is running. Besides, that way
> you've got a known-good rescue CD if anything goes wrong...
> 
> You can do something similar for /tmp, or make it tmpfs (so it uses
> memory or swap space according to the whim of the memory manager).
> Incidentally, what are you doing for swap space?
> 
> You can also cut down the number of kernels installed: you only need one
> good one installed plus one to which you plan to upgrade.

Whilst this won't be of any use to the OP, I'll just mention that an 
LVM-based installation (which is the default in FC3) would offer an 
alternative solution of shrinking /home or /usr and reallocating the 
space to /. Or a new disk could be added and space from that added to 
the / filesystem.

Paul.