Copying large file systems

[gfunk123]

Hi there

In my organisation we have a solaris network with /home being automounted from /export/home on a central file server (usual stuff) however, the guy who originally set this up only allocated 3gb to /export/home and now we are really struggling for space. I have a new 18gb disk installed on the same box, it has been formatted and is ready to go. My problem is once i make sure everyone is out of their home directory, what would be the best procedure to copy all the data over to the new disk whilst retaining all folder and file permissions and then of course making it live !. I presume that I dont have to worry about it being called /export/home on the file server as i could share it out even if it was called /newhome ?. What changes to NIS would i need to make ? (automount files etc)

Apologies if this sounds dumb, its just that I have to make sure i dont mess it up, as we have production systems running from /home and it HAS to work in the morning

Cheers
Gary

 

[Annihilannic]

You could just create a new filesystem on the new disk, then use rsync to 'mirror' the data across.

When you're ready to switch over:

[ul]
[li]make sure you have a good backup!
[li]stop NFS services for a while
[li]run another rsync to update any changed data
[li]unmount both filesystems
[li]modify /etc/vfstab to point to the new filesystem
[li]mount /export/home
[li]restart NFS
[/ul]

If something goes wrong you should always have the original filesystem to go back to.

See "backup to a spare disk" on

http://samba.org/rsync/examples.html

for example command lines.

Annihilannic.

 

[bi]

How was the original filesystem created (DiskSuite, Veritas)? Why can't you just extend the existing filesystem to include part or the entire new 18 GB disk?