bruce wrote:
i have a question regarding symlinks. i have my system partitioned
/dev/hda5 100 / /dev/hda1 10000 /home /dev/hda2 30000 /usr
is it possible to create a symlink that would allow '/' to point to /usr/root. i'm inclined to think you can't but i'm not knowledgeable about the concept of symlinks within linux....
You have had a couple of very good explanations of why this is not possible. Now let's take a look at why you're trying to do this.
I suspect the subtext is that you're running out of space on /. One thing you can do is to put /var under /usr and symlink /var to usr/var.
I'd recommend a relative symlink here: don't put / at the beginning of usr/var when you're creating the symlink. That way it should still point to the same place when something like anaconda mounts it during system upgrade.
You'll have to do this while as little as possible is running. You could try booting into run level 1, but the rescue CD would be better: that way *nothing* from your Fedora install is running. Besides, that way you've got a known-good rescue CD if anything goes wrong...
You can do something similar for /tmp, or make it tmpfs (so it uses memory or swap space according to the whim of the memory manager). Incidentally, what are you doing for swap space?
You can also cut down the number of kernels installed: you only need one good one installed plus one to which you plan to upgrade.
Whilst this won't be of any use to the OP, I'll just mention that an LVM-based installation (which is the default in FC3) would offer an alternative solution of shrinking /home or /usr and reallocating the space to /. Or a new disk could be added and space from that added to the / filesystem.
Paul.
