topic Re: Creating New Filesystems in Operating System - HP-UX

Creating New Filesystems

Habib_4 — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:48:11 GMT

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone is well on this mighty fine english afternoon!

I need your help guys!

I am working on a unix machine at home, and at the moment when I look in "/etc/fstab" I see the following file-systems:

/dev/vg00/lvol3 / vxfs delaylog 0 1
/dev/vg00/lvol1 /stand hfs defaults 0 1

When I go into the root directory I see the following:

".dt", ".dtprofile", ".profile", ".sw", "/dev", "/etc", "/home", "/opt", "/bin", "/stand", "/test", "/tmp", "/usr", "/var".

First question is, why are these not in the '/etc/fstab' file.

Secondly,

How would I mount any of these directories?, as at the moment, when I run a 'bdf' I can only see "/" and "/stand".
When I try to mount "/var", then I get the following error:

"mount: /var was either ignored or not found in /etc/fstab"

What is going on with this?
What do I have to edit and how can i sort this out so that when I run a 'bdf' command I get the filesystems displaying as normal.

Habib.

Re: Creating New Filesystems

HGN — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:55:17 GMT

Hi

The directories you mentioned does not show up in bdf for the reason becuase those are all directories under /, they where not created as a separate filesystem during install I think.

Rgds

HGN

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Ninad_1 — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:58:57 GMT

Habib,

It seems that instead of having separate filesystems for /var, /usr, /opt - they all reside as simple directories in your root filesystem, hence you cannot see them in bdf. So you need not mount anything now - the contents are there in the /usr, /var directories themselves [ and not /usr , /var filesystems ]

Regards,
Ninad

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:00:08 GMT

Shalom Habib,

Folders as noted are not fileystems.

"mount: /var was either ignored or not found in /etc/fstab"

That concerns me. If this is an HP-UX machine, it needs a mounted /var filesystem. If not, critical logs will fill up the root fileystem quickly.

uname -a please.

SEP

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Patrick Wallek — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:00:40 GMT

It sounds like this machine was set up with a "fat root" partition. Basically, all filesystems except /stand are NOT mounted separately, rather all just exist under '/' and '/' is probably several GB in size.

What does the output of 'bdf' look like? How big is the '/' filesystem?

Re: Creating New Filesystems

James George_1 — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:03:35 GMT

Hi Habib,

Welcome to the world of Unix !!!

first, check if there is another copy of yor actual fstab file

# ll /etc/fstab*

If you find one, see whether you have all the mount points correctly , if so , then copy that fstab to the one you have now and do

# mount -a

Secondly :

all the directories that you see under root is not meant for mounting.

you have to mount ony /home, /tmp, /var, /usr , /opt and /stand .

you have to find out the Logical volue to mount on these mount points.

# cd /dev/vg00

# ll lvol*

and mount these LV's on these points ..

Here is an example

/dev/vg00/lvol1 87701 30303 48627 38% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol8 1736704 968781 720473 57% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol7 1228800 907376 301929 75% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol4 1048576 2134 981745 0% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol6 819200 602242 203401 75% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol5 81920 32017 47016 41% /home

to mount

# mount /dev/vg00/lvolX /home .. follow the same for all the LV's.

good Luck !!

James

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Habib_4 — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:03:43 GMT

This is a response to Steven.E Protter,

uname -a displays:

HP -UX habib B.11.00 A 9000/715 2016634916 two-user license

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Kent Ostby — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:05:07 GMT

HGN is right IF you can cd into the directory and there are files there.

If you are missing files then you probably are missing a few lines from fstab.

My vg00 in fstab looks like this:

/dev/vg00/lvol3 / vxfs delaylog 0 1
/dev/vg00/lvol1 /stand hfs defaults 0 1
/dev/vg00/lvol4 /opt vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol5 /tmp vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol6 /usr vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol7 /var vxfs delaylog 0 2

Re: Creating New Filesystems

Bill Hassell — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:06:18 GMT

If this is an HP-UX system, it was setup very non-standard, namely a giant "/" volume with everything stored there. If you do something like this:

du /var

you'll see lots and lots of directories. And here's a trick to knowing where a particular directory or file is mounted:

bdf /var
bdf /tmp
bdf /etc/fstab

bdf takes the argumaent and tracks down the mountpoint, in your case, all 3 will show that the item is in /.

This was a common technique many years ago when disks were measured in megs and there were no useful volume managers (like LVM). Your system is fine, but it means that if something goes wrong and a massively large file is generated, the entire computer goes down because all the directories (except /stand) are also full. Separate mountpoints for different filesystems allows some control and continued operation in case of a full filesystem.

Re: Creating New Filesystems

JASH_2 — Fri, 05 May 2006 04:51:18 GMT

Habib,

From your uname -a, you are working on a workstation, rather than a server. for a workstation, it is not uncommon to have just the 2 mount points. you can always re-install hp-ux and devide your (probably small) disk up into various mount points, but it is not worth it.
The amount you will be doing on your workstation, probably playing with patches etc, does not really warrant bothering.
I had an old workstation and just had 2 mount points, went for years.

Regards,

JASH