Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 23:22:51 -0600 From: "Ryan Thompson [FreeBSD]" <freebsd@sasknow.com> To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Hardware upgrade time.. Root filesystem moving Message-ID: <38338D2B.4C0FD5AC@sasknow.com>
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Hi all; I'll shortly be adding some additional storage to my production server. Currently, my / and /var partitions are on an old, slow and noisy drive. / doesn't change, but /var is also kept on the same drive, and is rapidly losing available space (I've already had to symlink /var/mail to another fs). So, to make a long story short, I would like to move /, /var and /www filesystems to a new, faster, bigger bootable drive, and have as little downtime (and headaches) as possible during the transition. Obviously, I'm going to be down for as long as it takes me to cable the new drive in and reboot, but I'd like to avoid as many other delays as possible. I run a heavily configured 3.2 system with a good number of options installed. Most of my changes are documented, but I'm sure I've missed one or two important points along the way that would take me inordinate amounts of time to track down and fix. So, starting from scratch is perhaps not a good option. I do have another "free" system here on the LAN (though it's an NT machine :-) I COULD, however, sacrifice it to the cause temporarily to install a new system on the new drive. (Perhaps also a good time to install and test the newest 3.3-STABLE). However, an version upgrade could also generate a number of headaches. Doesn't look like much of the config will have changed with 3.3, but it's still not going to be a drag and drop replacement of /etc :-) I also perform tape backups, though I do this across the LAN and only take partials of critical files. (So, in the event of server armageddon, I wouldn't lose any data, but I'd have quite a scramble on my hands. Money is the limiting factor, here, people... Not intelligence :-) Therefore, it's not really feasable for me to do a complete restore from backup to the new drive. So, my options, then: 1) Take NT machine down in favour of new FreeBSD install (yippee!!). Spend days-weeks configuring everything as I need so I can just replace the kernel/address settings, and drop it in my production system, with a minimum of downtime. Would use some NFS mounting to grab old and important config settings. Pro: Opportunity to upgrate to and test 3.3-stable. Con: Involved process, some opportunity to make errors. 2) Install a base 3.2 system on NT on new drive, NFS mount my old system, and copy literally everything on /, /var and /www over. Pro: Relatively fast and easy in comparison. Less likely to foul up my configuration. Con: Same server, different drive. No opportunity to upgrade. 3) ?? Suggestions ?? Most of the problems I will have with either option above is the complexity of the server. I don't even know where all the dependencies lie. I have added many libraries from all kinds of sources, installed ports, packages, downloaded software, you name it. I'd like to know of any success/horror stories any of you have had with similar situations. - Ryan Thompson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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