Re: System stops because /var/log not found after moving to new partition

Ray Olszewski
2005-02-27T02:59:29Z

For future reference, it is a lot easier to associate partitions with a
single top-level directory than with multiple ones, as you have chosen to
to. For example, if I assign a partition to /home, I can just mount it
there in fstab, without needing to use the symlink indirection you use:

/dev/hda4 /home ext2 defaults 0
2

>Bu I am facing one problem.
>
>When I boot my system logger does not see the /var/log which has been moved
>to the new location .
>
>The system just hangs .

At what point does it "just" hang? What is the last message on screen? And
how long do you wait ... are you sure it is a true hang and not a problem
that times out after, say, 3 minutes?

>When I boot in single mode by passing an argument to my kernel that does
>show in the dmesg in the new location .
>
>In addtion when I run a command like 'clear ' it shows that it could not
>find the library to run it .

Where does your system have libncurses.so.5 (the "missing" library)? On my
systems,it is always in /lib, a hard place to lose.

>I have mounted hda5 & hda6 in my fstab .
>
>I did create soft link for my new var , new tmp & new usr to the the /var ,
>/tmp , /usr as ffs :-
>
>ln -s /mnt/hda5/var /var
>ln -s /mnt/hda5/tmp /tmp
>
>ln -s /mnt/hda6/usr /usr

This should all work fine, assuming the symlinks are created immediately
after the partitiions are mounted during the init process.

>I moved the old files using the ff commands:-
>
>cd source directory
>
>cp -ax * /mnt/usr5/var
>
>or
>
>cd /src/dir ; tar cf - . | (cd /dest/dir && tar xvf - )
>
>
>
>
>But still it does not work .
>
>Please find attached the dmesg & library error and fstab.

I assume the dmesg example is from the single-user boot, not the one that
"just hangs". So it doesn't tell us what is up with the hang. Next time,
please also include the output of ...

ls -l /
df

... and if you are reporting the results of two different boot/init
sequences (single user and multiuser) please be VERY VERY clear about which
attempt each result goes with.