Copy /usr to a larger partition?

[JonFer]

I have a Dell PC running Linux and the /usr partition is too small. Is there a problem if I copy this data to a larger partition and mount the larger partition as /usr instead?

I know I can install System Commander or Partition Magic to resize the partition but wanted to know if the above method would also work.

Thanks.

 

[RhythmAce]

Yes - You should be fine doing it that way. You may also want to look into lvm.

 

[stefanwagner]

Don't forget, to tell /etc/fstab about the new location.
Problems may occour, if this partition is of a different fstype (reiserfs, ext3) which isn't compiled into the kernel, but only loaded as modul, since few startup-routines need sources from /usr (/usr/lib/kbd/keymaps ...).

 

[JustKIDn]

Hi JonFer,

I just did this myself recently.

You can read some about it here; thread619-793089

HTH!

tgus

____________________________
Families can be together forever...

 

[JonFer]

Thanks for your help and advice.

 

[JonFer]

Got this to work by...

1. Making new partitions with the size I wanted that were the same type as the current ones.
2. Mounting the new partitions with /etc/fstab
3. cp -rp the files from the old to new partition
4. modifying the labels for the old partitions (/etc/fstab had labels for some of the partitions instead of the /dev/sda# syntax) and giving the old labels to the new partitions (required starting in single-user mode to allow /usr relabeling)

Restarted and everything worked great. Thanks again.