[CLUE-Tech] making use of unused disk space

[David Anselmi]

Friedman, Jason wrote:
> Thanks for the responses.  I followed up on a few and decided I might
> not have the stomach to try any re-partitioning right now.  The box is a
> production box and I don't want to take it offline for fear of never
> getting it online again.

For a production box, you'll have to be very careful.  Depending on how 
much the data changes (i.e., static web pages vs. a database used by 
customers) and what downtime you can stand, you may be able to back up, 
repartition and restore.  You may not want to try any of the previous 
ideas, even with a backup, because if there are glitches you'll be 
spending downtime figuring them out.

Best bet it to do your adjustments on an exact copy on your test server 
and swap the disks into the production box after you know how it will 
work.  Or just swap the test box in.  You do have a test box that is 
identical to your production system, right?  Don't ever make changes on 
a production system without being exactly sure what will happen (and 
that means you've done it and documented what you did).

There was a post on the LFS list last year from a guy who had screwed up 
libc compiling something on a production box.  He was willing to pay 
someone to fix it for him.  He got a lot of advice on what he was doing 
wrong, but no offers to take the job.

> One last question:  will performance suffer as a partition reaches 80%
> or 90% of its capacity?

Yes.  Linux et. al. do dynamic defragmentation (I've heard).  I think 
fsck can tell you how fragmented a fs is.  Below 10% free space the disk 
has a hard time keeping things defragged so things slow down.  This is 
hearsay, I haven't tried filling a fs to see what happens.  Filling / is 
bad.  Filling /var probably is too because all your logging will break 
(and the logs are probably what filled it in the first place).

Dave