Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 09:27:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu (Annelise Anderson) Cc: suzt_78@yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Oliver=20Humpage?=), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, oliver@watershed.co.uk Subject: Re: formatting 'unused space' Message-ID: <200207291327.g6TDREb29305@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10207290459240.16844-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> from "Annelise Anderson" at Jul 29, 2002 05:05:59 AM
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> > On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Oliver Humpage wrote: > > > > > Sorry, this is an embarrassingly newbie question... > > > > A 20GB disk in my mail server was about to die, so I > > did an emergency dd(1) of its contents over to a new > > 40GB drive. So now, on the new drive, I have a 20GB > > partition (with /, /usr and /var on it), and 20GB of > > "unused" space. > > > > Is it possible to fdisk (and presumably disklabel) > > this spare 20GB? I don't want to do anything fancy > > with it, just to have it mounted as /spare_space or > > similar. And since this is our main mail server, I > > don't really want to wipe the whole disk and restore > > from tape... > > > > I couldn't tell from `man fdisk` whether you can > > format one partition without wiping the whole drive. > > Can you in fact just ask for the unused space to be > > "FreeBSD" in sysinstall, and it won't touch your other > > partitions? Or if fdisk won't do it, is there anything > > that can? > > Yes, as mentioned below, you can do this, but I would recommend making a good backup - using dump(8) on to some other media - tape, a spare disk, etc and starting the slicing and partitioning from scratch and then reload the stuff using restore(8). There is much less chance for an error and really I don't have that much confidence that the slicing and partitioning will keep it all clean. ////jerry > Yes, you can create a slice (dos partition) in what > space, subject to the limitation of four slices per drive. > You can then make up to eight partitions on the slice for > different file systems. > > You could create a /usr/local file system; or a /usr/ports; > and/or a /usr/obj; or move tmp there will a symlink; or > just stash stuff like old kernels or isos. Often people make > /home a separate partition. > > If you're careful and don't delete what exists, you should > not have any trouble overwriting what's already on the disk. > > Annelise > > > -- > Annelise Anderson > Author of: FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your PC > Available from: BSDmall.com and amazon.com > Book Website: http://www.bittreepress.com/FreeBSD/introbook/ > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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