Moving/merging a filesystem back into /

Kevin Korb kmk at sanitarium.net
Mon Dec 2 15:55:00 MST 2013


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On 12/02/13 17:44, Charles Marcus wrote:
> On 2013-12-02 4:49 PM, Kevin Korb <kmk at sanitarium.net> wrote:
>> A little Gentoo specific info here...
>> 
>> On 12/02/13 16:24, Leen Besselink wrote:
>>> On Mon, Dec 02, 2013 at 02:31:23PM -0500, Charles Marcus
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm going to be moving a filesystem around, and was planning
>>>> on using rsync to do it, so like to get some advice from
>>>> those more experienced than I (both using rsync, and moving
>>>> filesystems)...
>>>> 
>>>> I currently have a system that has a separate /usr on an LVM 
>>>> partition.
>>>> 
>>>> I want to merge this back into the / (root) filesystem.
>>>> 
>>>> This is a production server (mail server, gentoo linux), so
>>>> I'd really like to not brick this thing in the process.
>>>> 
>>>> What would the best arguments to use for making sure that 
>>>> everything is preserved properly for a smooth transition?
>>> I have some simple tips:
>>> 
>>>> Some suggestions on the gentoo list have been:
>>>> 
>>>> -a, or -axAHX, or -apogXx, or -PvasHAX
>>>> 
>>>> or should I go with a combined -apogsvxAHPX ?
>>>> 
>>> I suggest you have a look at the output of rsync --help, it
>>> says:
>>> 
>>> -a, --archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no 
>>> -H,-A,-X)
>>> 
>>> Clearly some of the ones you mention are already on that list.
>>> 
>>> There is no need to add them again.
>> Agreed completely.
> 
> Ok, so based solely on what is included in -a, the above could be 
> potentially shortened to:
> 
> -apogsvxAHPX
> 
> Then, after reading the following, looks like it could ultimately
> be whittled down to:
> 
> -avxHX --numeric-ids

- --numeric-ids won't matter if rsync isn't networking but it is an
important one to know about.

> 
> ?
> 
>>> So what is stored in /usr ? Is there also a /usr/src ? or 
>>> /usr/local that has any content ?
> 
> Yes...
> 
>> OP was talking about booting from a live media so no sub-mounts
>> would be mounted so this shouldn't matter.
> 
> There are no submounts.
> 
>>> -A can be useful if you have ACLs, lots of systems don't.
>> ACLs are only supported if the filesystem is mounted with the
>> acl option so that is a simple way to check if it should be used
>> (also you will get errors if you try to write ACLs to a
>> filesystem that isn't mounted with that option).
> 
> Apparently no acls.
> 
> /dev/sda1               /boot           ext2
> noauto,noatime  1 2 /dev/sda2               none            swap
> sw              0 0 /dev/sda3               /               ext3
> noatime         0 1 /dev/sda4               /backups        ext3
> noatime         0 2 /dev/vg2/home           /home
> reiserfs        noatime         0 0 /dev/vg2/usr            /usr
> reiserfs        noatime         0 0 /dev/vg2/var            /var
> reiserfs        noatime         0 0

ext[34] can remember acl as a default mount option.  I have no idea if
reiserfs can do that or not and I recommend against using reiserfs at all.

> 
> So, no -A...
> 
>>> -X can be useful if you have extended attributes, lots of
>>> systems don't.
> 
> Dunno if I do or not... how would I tell?

For Gentoo if you don't have USE=caps or USE=caps-ng set then you
probably don't have and xattrs in /usr

> 
> Would including -X cause a problem if there are none?

Probably not.  Unless your rsync was compiled without USE=xattr.

>> This is Gentoo specific but other distributions are moving this
>> way. Gentoo has the USE=caps and caps-ng settings which means to
>> use file capabilities flags instead of SetUID to root to perform
>> certain privileged tasks.  This means that programs like ping and
>> traceroute can be allowed to do the one privileged network
>> function that they need without chmoding them +s and forcing them
>> to run with full root privileges.  -X is needed to copy these
>> flags.
>> 
>>> -H is for hardlinks, I don't usually see many of them around.
>> In Gentoo and others /usr/share/zoneinfo is full of hard links.
>> There are others around the system too.  If you want to check
>> your /usr for hard links run this: find /usr -mount -type f
>> -links +1 -ls
> 
> Ummm... that does find a lot of links, but they all seem to be
> soft links, not hard links?

That command will not list symlinks.  Anything it lists is a hard link.

> Most are links to other files in the same directory.
> 
> Is -H only about hard links? Or all links?

- -H is only hard links.  Symbolic links are handled in -a.

> 
> Looks like a ton of soft links in /usr/bin too...

Yep, that is how my Gentoo looks.  Lots of hard links in /usr.

> 
> Sadly, this is an ancient system, and only has 2GB of RAM...
> 
> The issue with  memory is only about Hard links?

When using -H rsync remembers the name>inode mapping of any file it
finds with link count >1 that way it can make a link for any
subsequent file it finds with the same inode number.  Unless you have
millions of them this shouldn't bother you.  If you don't use -H then
hard link files become duplicate files and consume extra disk space
instead of rsync RAM.

> Any way to do a test to see if it will run out of memory during
> the actual run?

- --dry-run

> If it does, would cp run into the same problem?

Yes.

>>> I've not seen a Gentoo system in a long time, but if /usr just 
>>> contains installed packages then I think you won't see any of
>>> the above. But if you add them, they don't harm. It will just
>>> take more time and maybe use more memory.
>>> 
>>> For example -H will use more memory if I'm not mistaken. If
>>> you don't have enough memory, it might crash.
>> - -H will use more memory according to how many hard links it
>> finds.  If it runs you out of memory then you have tons of them
>> and not using -H would probably run you out of disk space.
>> 
>>> But I don't think it is usually a problem these days. But if
>>> Gentoo builds all the packages in /usr/src andd lots of source
>>> still exist, it might be very large.
>>> 
>>> If you do have a /usr/src or /usr/local or something like that.
>>> Are they on the same filesystem ?
> 
> Yes... and while /usr/src only contains the kernel sources,
> /usr/portage contains all of the other system/application sources.
> I could move that, but I'd rather not right now.

These are things that would be wise to keep on lvm2 as they are very
variable in size and can sometimes benefit from having different mount
options or even filesystem types.

> Total size for /usr isn't *huge*, but is about 13.5GB.

That is pretty huge for a /usr in my experience.

> 
>>> If not, you want -x to prevent them being copied as well.
>>> 
>>> You can obviously easily check if there is anything else
>>> mounted under /usr by checking the mount command and/or
>>> /etc/fstab
>>> 
>>> I've never used -s
>> - -s is --protect-args.  It is often used in scripts so they can
>> handle any weird path someone might tell the script to copy.  It
>> is important if you have spaces in your source or target
>> parameter.
> 
> So, since I'm doing this manually, it isn't needed?

No.

> 
>>> I don't see any reason for using -p or -P for partial files, 
>>> because if copying doesn't succeed you'll probably just start
>>> over. There is no network to worry about.
>> - -P is also shorthand for --progress.  On a local only copy -
>> --whole-file is forced so --partial is irrelevant.
> 
> Ok, scratch -p and -P...

If you want to watch the --progress output then -P is a perfectly fine
shortcut for it.  -p is --perms which is unrelated and part of -a.

> 
>>> When using rsync from an other machine, which uses other 
>>> uids/gids, I would always recommend to add:
>>> 
>>> --numeric-ids
>> If networking were involved I would completely agree with this.
>> If the live CD has duplicate usernames with different numbers
>> badness can happen.
> 
> So, to be safe, use --numeric-ids...?

It won't hurt.  It is just extra typing but it could be considered to
be a good habit for when it does matter.

> 
>>>> Are the trailing slashes required/important/necessary?
>>> Yes, you need to use them when you are working with
>>> directories.
>>> 
>>> Anyway, on most Linux distributions, moving the content of
>>> /usr shouldn't be a big event.
>>> 
>>> Because the system doesn't change the content of /usr it
>>> usually just contains programs, libraries and other files from
>>> installed packages.
>>> 
>>> Don't worry, to much.
>>> 
>>> If it's a mailserver, what you could do is:
>>> 
>>> - shutdown - unplug the network - do everything you need to do
>>> to copy the files and change fstab - check if everything starts
>>> up normally - plug network back in
>>> 
>>> If with the check something fails, reboot with the livecd again
>>> and fix any problems.
>>> 
>>> Because the mailserver isn't connected to the network, no mail
>>> was lots or bounced.
>>> 
>>> I assume this is a standalone mailserver that doesn't depend on
>>> an external database. A mailserver shouldn't bounce mail if DNS
>>> isn't working for a little while.
>>> 
>>> Something else you could consider is to not automatically start
>>> the server processes and first check that everything works.
>>> Don't forgot to enable them to start automatically again when
>>> everything is done ;-)
>>> 
>>> Hope that was useful for you.
> 
> Yes, thanks to both of you!
> 
> --
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> */Charles/*
> 
> 

- -- 
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	Kevin Korb			Phone:    (407) 252-6853
	Systems Administrator		Internet:
	FutureQuest, Inc.		Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
	Orlando, Florida		kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
	Web page:			http://www.sanitarium.net/
	PGP public key available on web site.
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