Managing root partition on desktop

[pajamian]

I wish I could take credit for the idea, just passing on a tip I’ve learned from others over the years.

[oscav]

Today I was able to convert the /home to an ext4 50 Gb filesystem.
But I could not create logical volumes in that mode, even after a “mount -o remount,rw /” so I had to create the lvm devices in normal mode and do the move mounting the new lv on /mnt.
Let’s see if I can turn /var into a fs. I think there’s no need to do the same to /etc. the size looks to be static.
I repeat, I have no real need to do this, I’m just playing around. So far I’m having fun.

[jlehtone]

@oscav

Let’s see if I can turn /var into a fs

Red Hat warns about that in their docs. Some /var/* is used early in boot, so mounting /var should occur in initramfs stage.
Most subdirs of /var ought to be safe to mount “later” in boot.

[efdevse]

Sorry to cut in, but…

@jlehtone

Red Hat warns about that in their docs. Some /var/* is used early in boot, so mounting /var should occur in initramfs stage.
Most subdirs of /var ought to be safe to mount “later” in boot.

Do you know where in the docs I can find that? I’m really interested to read up on that, since I have /var on a separate partition (in a LVM) + I have my swapfile in there as well. I’ve always used that setup on my systems, and haven’t run into anything, yet (knock-on-wood).

$ type diskList && diskList
diskList is aliased to `mount | grep ^/dev | cut -d ' ' -f 1-5'
/dev/mapper/rl8-root on / type xfs
/dev/mapper/rl8-home on /home type xfs
/dev/mapper/rl8-srv on /srv type xfs
/dev/mapper/rl8-var on /var type xfs
/dev/sda2 on /boot type ext2

$ swapon -s
Filename            Type    Size        Used    Priority
/var/vm/swapfile0   file    4194300     788992  -2

That’s what I usually go with. (In this case there’s also a 2MB biospartition for GPT that doesn’t show there.)

---

Trying to find the equalent of “9.15.5. Recommended Partitioning Scheme” for RHEL8 or 9. That one’s for RHEL6.

And that one has /var on a separate partition (Table 9.3, 9.5) - with a few warnings, and just make sure it’s big enough.

If you could find that doc you mentioned, I’d appreciate that. 'Cause if it’s recommended not to, I might have to rethink my setup.

[oscav]

Thanks for that info.
Some digging told me that I had to add “rd.lvm.lv=[VAR_VG_NAME]/[VAR_LV_NAME]” to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
Regenerate grub config with grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/rocky/grub.cfg
Copy the current initramfs image to a safe place
Recreate initramfs image with dracut -v -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

[jlehtone]

Appendix B. Partitioning reference Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Red...

[efdevse]

Thanks!

 

@RedHat :: B.5. Advice on partitions

• The /var directory holds content for a number of applications, including the Apache web server, and is used by the DNF package manager to temporarily store downloaded package updates. Make sure that the partition or volume containing /var has at least 5 GiB.

// …

• If /usr or /var is partitioned separately from the rest of the root volume, the boot process becomes much more complex because these directories contain boot-critical components. In some situations, such as when these directories are placed on an iSCSI drive or an FCoE location, the system may either be unable to boot, or it may hang with a Device is busy error when powering off or rebooting.

Ok, so I think I’m ok then. It’s way over 5GB, + my /srv partition (for Apache, etc) is 5GB as well, and it’s a local/standard drive (ie. non-iSCSI or FCoE).

[oscav]

Maybe it is this you’re looking for

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/performing_a_standard_rhel_9_installation/partitioning-reference_installing-rhel#doc-wrapper

[efdevse]

Thanks! Yes, that’s the same link I got from @jlehtone a few posts up,
…and where I quoted the text from.