[PLUG] How to combine 2 IDE drives into one ...

[Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

I have this problem. The primary harddrive on my mail server is starting to
fail ...

hda: timeout waiting for DMA
ide_dmaproc: chipset supported ide_dma_timeout func only: 14
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
ide_dmaproc: chipset supported ide_dma_timeout func only: 14
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success

And I've seen some ReiserFS errors in the log.

I'm configured like this:

/dev/hda1  /boot           ext2     defaults,errors=remount-ro   0      2
/dev/hda3  none            swap     sw                           0      0
#/dev/hda5  /var            reiserfs defaults                     0      2
/dev/hda6  /               reiserfs defaults                     0      1
/dev/hda7  /tmp            reiserfs defaults                     0      2
/dev/hdc1  /var            reiserfs defaults                     0      2

proc       /proc           proc     defaults                     0      0
/dev/fd0   /floppy         auto     defaults,user,noauto         0      0
/dev/cdrom  /cdrom  iso9660  defaults,user,noauto,ro  0  0

With /var on it's own drive. I forget why I did it that way ... I don't
really need it done that way.

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6             7.7G  4.6G  3.2G  60% /
/dev/hda1              23M  1.5M   21M   7% /boot
/dev/hda7             573M   97M  477M  17% /tmp
/dev/hdc1             4.8G  1.1G  3.8G  23% /var
tmpfs                 251M     0  251M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdb5              37G  9.9G   27G  28% /mnt

I've got a spare drive I can use, that is more than large enough to hold everything.
I'd like to transfer everything over - files, users, owner info, etc.

How about this:

I configure hdb (40G drive) like so ...

/hdb1	25M (to be /boot)
Extended partition 
/hdb5	10G (to be /)
/hdb6	20G (to be /home)
/hdb7	 1G (to be /tmp)
/hdb8    7G (to be /var)
/hdb9	 1G (to be swap; system has 512M RAM)

A semi-arbitrary breakdown, to fill up the disk. Other opinions welcome.

Can I boot normally (i.e., from hda); mount partitions on hdb; and run

pax -r -w -p e fromdir todir
(which I found on an old post by Gabe; thanks!)

Don't think I've missed any options.

So I'd do 

pax -r -w -p e /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1

and repeat as necessary, for all partitions.

Then mount /dev/hdb5; edit the /etc/fstab on that partition; change the
"/var" mounting line to say "/dev/hda" instead of "/dev/hdc".

Swap hdb for hda, and remove hdc. And boot normally, and all should be fine.

Hopefully! :-)

Comments? What have I forgotten/overlooked/dunno about?

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature