Re: usr partition revisited

[Alex Vorobiev <sasha forum swarthmore edu>]

> The /usr parttition is filling up on an Apache web server. That may shed
> some light.

check out httpd logs... chances are they are growing fast.   especially if
you've a stream of error messages going to httpd/logs/error_log.  it that's 
the problem, you may want to have a cron job that would rotate your logs
every so often.

> 2nd, the mail partition that is getting full, is on one Hard Drive. Can't I
> add another hard drive to this system, coming down for awhile won't hurt,
> and tell linux to start placing /var/spool/mail there. The partition is
> actually labeled just / but var is under that slash and the only other
> partitions on that hard drive is /home and /usr, both with plenty of space.

the mail spool must be filling up for a completely different reason if i 
understand correctly that you have / and /usr on different partitions. 

> Basically I realize I have to move /var/spool/mail and then tell sendmail
> where to put /var/spool/mail. Right?

if the mail spool (/var/spool/mail) is the only thing you need to move, 
you could just
- shut down sendmail
- create a new partition/directory elsewhere 
- mount the new partition as, say, /tempmail
- copy the mail spool to the new partition
  (cd /var/spool/mail &&  tar cf - . ) | (cd /tempmail && tar xpf - )
 -- similarly, you could use the dump/restore combination -- 
- mount the new partition as /var/spool/mail, don't forget to edit your
  /etc/fstab to have it mount on boot up

> Now, will this hinder any of the other systems such as DNS, that is running
> on this PC? Will they keep looking at the current partition? Only moving the
> directory /var/spool/mail and all of its username files?

again, if mail spool is the only think you are moving, sendmail and 
mail clients are the only programs that use it.  unless you have custom 
scripts that use that subdirectory for some reason.