Topic: Adding a second hard drive

[spamnchips]

I have just configured and got SME 6.0.1 running.  I would like to add a second 200GB hard drive to use for file sharing, e-mail etc and leave the smaller drive for the system.  Is this possible with SME or would it be better to install the system directly onto the 200GB drive ?  I have read in the forums that anything over 137 GB is OK with version 6.0.1.

Many thanks in anticipation
Spamnchips


javascript:emoticon(':pint:')
Another pint of beer

[Garfield]

This is precisely what I have been working on all day.
A relatively small disk for the system and a large one for ibays and some selected home directories.
I have things more or less working now.
Moving ibays and using symlinks works great,although I had to change the Apache config a bit to let Apache follow SymLinks. For the home directories I have chose not to move the complet home directories, but just the "home" part under the user's home directory. In that way, all mail stuff etcetera is still on the system disk. But I don't know of any reason why you can't move them completely.

[spamnchips]

Thanks Arvid.  I take it that all the configuration has to be done as root.  Any clues on how to set it up as I have only been playing with Linux for about two weeks.

Regards

Spamnchips

[Garfield]

This HowTo should help you along.

http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/extra%20hard%20disk

Be careful, I noticed 2 typos in this HowTo:

1) Step 6.2 first statement reads

Code: [Select]

ls -l /home/e-smith/ibays
but it should be

Code: [Select]

ls -l /home/e-smith/files/ibays

2) Step 6.6 statement reads

Code: [Select]

ln -s /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 /home/e-smith/files/mp3
but it should be

Code: [Select]

ln -s /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mp3

For enabling Apache to follow SymLins there's another forum topic:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=27619.0

[spamnchips]

Arvid,
Many thanks for the pointers (and corrections).  I'll give it a try.

Regards
John

[Garfield]

I have done away with the symlinks alltogether because of FTP problems. I found a much simpler solution: mounting via /etc/fstab. I learned that as of the 2.4 kernel, filesystems can be mounted more than once. So I removed the symlinks and mounted the various ibays on my 2nd disk into the directory structure on the 1st disk, and voilà, it all works !

[spamnchips]

Arvid,
Well I followed the How To and your help and managed to make it work.  I have setup a number of i-bays and oddly some of them can be accessed and uploaded to from my Windoze machines whilst others refuse to give access.  I need to look at the CHOWN values and see if they are different.  There is a menu item in the i-bay section of the server manager which allows access with or without passwords which was a big help.  

I am a bit shaky at the moment with mounting of second drives but according to the book I have it suggests that if you mount the drive at say /mnt/bigdisk (as in the How To example) then all the directories that are in the tree below that one should also be mounted.  I thought of mounting at say /mnt/bigdisk/ibays and then they should all be covered.  Is this correct or have I misunderstood the concept of mounting ?

Regards
John

[Garfield]

Hi,

Yes you could mount /mnt/bigdisk/ibays in one go but I myself have done it on a per-ibay basis.

My etc/fstab now contains these lines for my ibays:

Code: [Select]


# Mount user/home directories located on bigdisk
#
/mnt/bigdisk/users/arvid /home/e-smith/files/users/arvid/home none bind
#
# Mount ibays located on bigdisk
#
/mnt/bigdisk/ibays/Primary /home/e-smith/files/ibays/Primary none bind
/mnt/bigdisk/ibays/svjohncooper /home/e-smith/files/ibays/svjohncooper none bind
/mnt/bigdisk/ibays/komarno2005 /home/e-smith/files/ibays/komarno2005 none bind
#
# Mount ibays for testing purposes
#
/mnt/bigdisk/ibays/testibay /home/e-smith/files/ibays/testibay none bind

[spamnchips]

Thanks Arvid,
I'll give it a try and let you know how I get on.  Will I have to remove the symlinks ?  If so, how do I do that ?

Regards
John

[Garfield]

Hi,

Yes you will have to remove the symlinks.
They can be removed just like any normal file, so with rm <filename> or in this case rm <symlinkname>.

[spamnchips]

Avrid,
It all seems to work OK.  Thanks very much for your help.

Regards
John