From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jan 18 13:49:23 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA17261 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Mon, 18 Jan 1999 13:49:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com (cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com [24.2.89.207]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA17253 for ; Mon, 18 Jan 1999 13:49:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com) Received: (from cjc@localhost) by cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA19897; Mon, 18 Jan 1999 16:50:38 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from cjc) From: "Crist J. Clark" Message-Id: <199901182150.QAA19897@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> Subject: Re: symbolic link trouble In-Reply-To: <19990118195742.22691.rocketmail@send102.yahoomail.com> from "N. R.R." at "Jan 18, 99 11:57:42 am" To: robalama@yahoo.com (N. R.R.) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 16:50:38 -0500 (EST) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: cjclark@home.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Paul T. Root wrote, > In a previous message, N. R.R. said: > > Hello, > > > > I was trying to create a symbolic link to /var by following this > > technique: > > > > #mkdir /usr/var > > #cd /var > > #tar cf - . | (cd /usr/var; tar xf - ) > > #rm -rf /var > > > > However, this is where it gets weird. It says: > > > > rm: /var: Device Busy > > > > #ln -s /usr/var /var > > > > even after I rebooted I still couldnt remove the /var directory. And, > > of course, many things wouldnt start at bootup (cron stuff, sendmail > > stuff, etc., due to not finding files in the /var directory) > > It would give me some errors along the lines of: > > There are files that are always open in /var. > > If you can reboot the easiest thing to do would be > mv /var /var.old You can't do this. It will complain that you cannot mv across filesystems. Here's how to go about this after copying the directory, root# umount -f /var root# rmdir /var root# ln -s /usr/var /var Now, what are you going to do with the /var partition? Also, check the console for programs complaining that they could not write to a file in /var. Give them a HUP signal. See a mail from 1/8/99 I sent to the list asking if I was doing pretty much the exact same procedure the corect way. The method I used worked. The subject was 'Repartitioning.' -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message