cleanup utility

[Tim Medford]

I need to reclaim some space from /var.

I've used the cleanup untility and committed all patches that have been superseded at least once. This only reclaimed about 80mb worth of space.

What I'd like to do is take everything in /var/adm/sw/save and move it to another filesystem. I would then rmdir the save directory, and recreate it as a symbolic link.

/var/adm/sw>ln -s /backup/save save

I know there's been a billion threads about /var/adm/sw/save, but I I don't remember seeing anyone suggest this particular idea.

Is there any reason not to do this? Would this add any risk during the boot process? For example, if that backup directory wasn't mounted would it interfere with system startup?

Thanks in advance,
Tim

[Hai Nguyen_1]

Tim,

Some HP-UX patches and SW are not configured until the system comes back up right after the patch installed followed by a required reboot.

Hai

[Sachin Patel]

Yes it will cause problem.
Say you have install some kernal patch and when system is coming back it try to configure that filesets if your linked file system is not mounted then it can cause problem.

Most of the time it will not cause any problem. because it mounts all filesystem before software configuration phase.

Sachin

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Actually, if you like you can move the entire /var/adm/sw to another filesystem and simply mount it under /var/adm/sw (after copying the contents to the new filesystem and then removing the original files/directories).

There is not even a requirement that /var be on the boot disk or even in vg00 but I would simply move /var/adm/sw to a new filesystem.

[Hai Nguyen_1]

Tim,

I do not know if you have OmniBack II on your server. If yes, you should consider creating the /var/opt/omni/vdb filesystem to accomodate the growth of OB II catalog data which should easily eat up 2GB over some time.

Hai

[S.K. Chan]

First of all the /var/adm/sw/save directory is what they called a "patch rollback" vault, meaning it has previous version of patches sitting here just in case you need to rollback to previous patch level. So everytime a superseeded patch is installed and configured it'll save a copy of older version patch in here. In a "reboot required" patch installation situation if you have /var/adm/sw/save pointing to some other location it'll failed during the configuration unless the FS where /var/adm/sw/save actually sits can be mounted. To cut the long story short I would not do this.

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

There are two perfect solutions to this:

First is to create an additional filesystem as suggested by Clay. The other is if you have enough disk space is to extend /var by either using on-line JFS if you have it or from your ignite tape.

Cheers
~Michael~

[hari jayaram_1]

Tim,

I agree with chan. If you want to recover some space you can just tar the save directory and move it of var but keep save where it is. Save will be required only during roll back. Even in the case where you have to roll back just restore the required roll back patch from the save archive.

Thanks

Rgds

Hari