[Samba] Adding Nested Partitions To A Mount Point

[Noah Dain]

On 11/13/05, Carter Campbell <carter at soph-text.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone can tell me if it is possible to mount a drive
> (single partition) to a nested directory on an existing Samba mount
> point and have the entire structure considered one drive?
>
> The situation is this.  I have a large drive mounted to a share called
> "/pub".  This has been identified as my Samba mount point and all works
> as it should.  What I would like to do is add a subdirectory to the
> drive mounted to the "/pub" share point and mount an additional drive to
> that. I would like to be able to have this second drive treated as an
> extention of the original disk, under Samba.  This would mean that the
> capacity of the second drive would be pooled with the first drive, on
> which it is mounted.
>
> For example:
> I have a 200GB hard drive mounted to the directory "/pub".  I would like
> to add an additional 60GB drive to this.  Can I create a directory on
> the 200GB drive called "/pub/temp" and mount the 60GB drive to that
> mount point?  Then be able to have Samba consider the whole mess as a
> single 260GB drive?
>
> I have already tried this (with my limited knowledge) and all that seems
> to happen is that the Samba identifed disk capacity size remains at the
> 200GB mark.  The additional 60GB isn't recognized.
>
> Would this be possible, or am I blowing smoke out my lower orifice?  If
> it is possible, how would I do this?  Is there any documentation that
> would explain something like this somewhere?  What would this be called
> if I were to look for it (I haven't the slightest idea how to start
> searching for such a thing)?
>
> Thanks to all in advance.
>
> Carter Campbell
> Calgary Alberta
> Canada
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I don't think this is so much a samba thing as an os thing.  samba
doesn't export filesystems like nfs, it just exports directories which
may be a singular filesystem, or contain multiple filesystems.  Samba
really doesn't care, just so long as it can access them.

back to the 'os thing'.  With linux, you can mount a filesystem on a
directory that isn't empty.  The underlying files are just hidden
while the second fs is mounted.  Unmount the second fs, and the
directory still contains it's old files.

as you described above, what you will end up with is being able to
store 200gigs of data in /pub EXCEPT for anything in /pub/temp, which
will be limited to 60gigs.  Two different filesystems.  What you want
is not the job of samba.

you want a logical volume management system.  An lvms will allow you
to grow/shink filesystems on the fly, append drives to give more
space, etc.  It's very cool.

For linux, there is lvm2 and evms.  Evms is a bit, well, it's totally
invasive to your system and kernel, so look into lvm2.  lvm2 is quite
nice and not too difficult to get the hang of.  Also make sure your
filesystem can support the operations you want (ie. reiser3 will grow
and shrink while in use, xfs is grow only, not sure about ext2/3, jfs
- does anyone use it at all???).

i would play around with lvm2 to get the hang of it first, maybe under
vmware or qemu, as you are bound to hose something the first time
through.  ;-)

--
Noah Dain