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let's just generalize this to moving an active directory to another file
system. /var is problematical because it contains logs, spools, utmp,
wtmp and other important active files. Most Unix systems maintain /var
as a separate file system for this reason. In any case, the best way to
move /var and other active directories is to first allocate the
partition for the new file system, using either the SuSE partitioner, or
some other product. Once this is done, you can shut down to single user
mode. (I recommend booting the rescue for moving /var). Then mount the
new file system somewhere (eg /mnt). Then using the recursive copy, (eg.
cp -R), copy the contents of the old /var to the new /var.
Then the next thing I do is to rename the old /var and create a new
empty /var directory. Then update /etc/fstab to mount the new partition
on /var. By renaming the old /var, you will still have access to the old
contents.
The reason to shut down to single user mode is that many of the files in
/var are used by daemons, and both utmp and wtmp are writen to by
/sbin/init as well as by login, telnet and other login programs.
- --
Jerry Feldman