On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Michael Hennebry <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote: > On Thu, 27 Feb 2014, Les Mikesell wrote: > >> On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Michael Hennebry >> <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote: > >>> Make /home , /var and /opt soft links to directories on /onebigpartition . >>> I've done similar when I wanted /home off the root partition, >>> but did not want to give it its own partition. >>> I tried to do a rebind, but could not make it work. >> >> I've done that after installs, but for /var at least it requires >> copying the contents to the target of the symlink before switching and >> a reboot after the change to make everything use the new location. >> I was wondering if it is possible to make the installer set it up that >> way in the first place - that is, with /var, /home, and /opt sharing >> space in a filesystem other than the root. > > Mine was post-install also. Neve tried it otherwise. > > You might try this: > Make the desired /home , /opt and /var directories empty. > Make the desired root partition empty except for soft links. > Tell the installer not to format the root partition. > Maybe it will do the right thing. Is there any 'new' thinking in terms of filesystem layout? The old tree sort of made sense in the old days of tiny, slow disks that had to be micro-managed. Now it seems like it would be good to isolate the system executables and maybe even the config files in a small section that could be mounted read-only except when planning to do updates, with an option to share space among any or all of the writable parts. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com