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Date:      Fri, 19 May 2000 20:30:23 -0700
From:      eito <eito@cs.pdx.edu>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        Jack Verdirame <jackv@netravision.com>
Subject:   Re: symbolic links and /var
Message-ID:  <20000519203023.B46192@dsl-only.net>
In-Reply-To: <00051915254902.00333@sqlczar.netravision.com>
References:  <00051915254902.00333@sqlczar.netravision.com>

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On Fri, May 19, 2000 at 03:17:02PM -0700, Jack Verdirame wrote:
> I was suppose to move the /tmp and /var to the /usr volume and create a
> symbolic link between them.  This worked for the tmp directory.  What I was
> doing for the /var directory is the following:
> 
> mkdir /usr/var
> cd /var
> tar cf - . | (cd /usr/var; tar xf - )
> cd /
> rm -rf /var
> ln -s /usr/var
> 
> I go this from the freeBSD book written by Greg Lehey - Excellent Book.
> 
> Anyway when I do the rm -rf /var it returns a device busy and will not
> remove the directory. I have gone into single user mode and tried this
> but the rm command returns the same result.  I am logged in as root, also.

The error was because some programs were still accessing files in /var.
You can run 'lsof' (this is in /usr/ports) to see which files are opened
by what programs.

> I did notice there is a var -> /usr/var symbolic link in the var directory.
> I have tried to remove this but I must be doing something wrong because it
> won't remove.
> 
> I do a ln -f /usr/var /var but is say it is not a directory.

The symbolic link, var, was created by the last command (ls -s /usr/var).
I don't know how you tried to remove this link. (rm should do the job.)
If you tried to remove it (and recrete a link) with 'ln -f /usr/var /var',
the reason you could not remove the link was, as the error message said,
because the source was a directory. You cannot create hard link of a
directory. So, you should use '-s' option to create a symbolic link.
Please check out ln man page for more details.


Regards,

:eito 

 


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