[CentOS] How to move /var to another partition

Sun Sep 25 18:53:33 UTC 2016
TE Dukes <tdukes at palmettoshopper.com>


> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Alice Wonder
> Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2016 1:40 PM
> To: centos at centos.org
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] How to move /var to another partition
> 
> 
> 
> On 09/25/2016 10:23 AM, J Martin Rushton wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 25/09/16 18:03, Robert Nichols wrote:
> >> On 09/25/2016 11:47 AM, TE Dukes wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I am getting low on space in my /(root) partition. I have 23GB free.
> >>>
> >>> I have 350GB in my /home partition. I am the only user.
> >>>
> >>> I was experimenting with virtualization and it causes the root
> >>> partition to get very low. I would like to move /var from the root
> >>> partition, to the same partition as /home, if that's safe to do.
> >>>
> >>> Or, resize /home and add another partition for /var
> >>>
> >>> I also don't want to screw the pooch doing it.
> >>>
> >>> This is over my head. The more I read about it, the more confused I
get.
> >>
> >> The way I've been doing it for quite some time is to make /var a
> >> separate partition, put the home directories on /var/home, and then
> >> bind-mount /var/home on /home. In /etc/fstab that's:
> >>
> >>     /var/home   /home   none   bind   0 0
> >>
> >> To keep SELinux happy, you need to set up an equivalence of /var/home
> >> to /home:
> >>
> >>     semanage fcontext -a -e /home /var/home
> >>
> >> It's all completely transparent in the running system. The only time
> >> I have to remember that it's set up that way is when I'm looking in
> >> my backups and need to know that home directories are backed up as
> >> part of /var.
> >>
> >
> > Alternatively create /home/VM and keep the virtualised disks in there.
> 
> 
> This is the solution I would use. I use < 80 GB for / which makes it cheap
for /
> to be an SSD (I use 120 GB SSD but every system, < 80GB is actually used,
> most < 60GB is actually used).
> 
> Databases and other stuff that take up space are in a /srv on its own
platter
> disk rather than in /var - I would do a similar thing with VM images.
> 
> It's nice to be able to do a fresh completely wiping the old root
partition and
> then be able to mount your other partitions and change a few config files
and
> be back up and running. Keep a small physical disk like an SSD just for /
makes
> that easy.
> 
[Thomas E Dukes] 

I was about to head off to Bestbuy and pickup a 1TB SATA drive but I think
I'm going to hold off for now and use /home for the VMs.

Thanks!!