NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/unix/amiga/2405

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-12 | 5.1 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Rob Healey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.amiga
Subject: Re: Help!!
Date: 12 Nov 1992 15:28:48 -0600
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
Lines: 95
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ub.d.umn.edu

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Keven Ring) writes:
=  I am beta testing our latest clone of UNIX for my university (see above).
=It is UNIX 2.1, and we are installing the most needed stuff onto approx.
=75 meg out of 100 meg on the HD.  I would like to see this come down a bit,
=and think I have solution.  I have it running at 62% capacity (using df -k)
=and therefore am really only using about 50 meg of the HD.  However, the
=partition remains at 75 meg.  What I am going to try is "optimize" the hard
=drive, sticking all of the files in UNIX ROOT in the first 50 meg or so.
=Then, by going into amiga dos, I can use HD TOOLBOX to shrink the partition.
=Unix swap will need to go directly after the root partition (as I have
=already found out).  I have a feeling that this will work as:
=
    NOPE! At best you'll be able to partially recover some of
    the data, at worst you wiped out vital filesystem bean
    counting info. B^(.

    1) Get the 2a patch disk for 2.1, I'd also recommend using the ufs
       filesystem over the default s5, especially since you are in a
       university setting and that's what all your other UNIX boxes
       are probably using.

    2) If you are only going to use the first 50M then set the
       partition size to 50M.

    3) UNIX uses the rdb to get the starting block for the partition
       and that's about it, it get's the size info from the filesystem
       on the partition. i.e. when you shrink the partition with
       HDToolbox UNIX won't know about it.

    4) Odds are pretty good HDToolbox will screw up the UNIX partitions
       if you use it on them.

    If this is supposed to be a UNIX box then I'd suggest a 240M or
    larger hard disk. If you can't do that then you'll have to do
    alot of custom work that requires significant knowledge of
    running AmigaUNIX off the floppys, UNIX rdb command, cpio to/from
    tape and NFS to a server that has enough space to hold the rest
    of the packages.

    Just because you shrink the partition in HDToolbox does NOT mean
    UNIX will somehow magically reformat it's filesystem to fit
    in that smaller size while preserving all the data in place.

=1)  I have shrunk the partition by 2 meg (without optimizing), used the new
=    space on amiga dos, booted up unix, and shut it down, went back onto
=    amiga dos, and everything was intact.
=
    That's because you got VERY lucky and didn't need to use the blocks
    that the filesystem, and therefore UNIX, still thinks it has.

=  Do I have a chance in ???? of getting this to work?  Basically, is there
=such a thing as an "optimizer" for UNIX that just reorganizes the files to the
=front of the partition.  If so, where can I get such a program?  If you
=hesitate in answering because I might destroy UNIX, well, don't worry.  As I
=said, I am basically beta testing it, and I can get it RECLONED (basically
=reinstalled in about 15 minutes free of charge).  Please, any help would be
=greatly appreciated.  If I get this to work, I should be able to "steal"
=about 25 megs!!
=
    In this simple setup it won't work. Essentially you have to:

    1) load at full size, 100M, shrink file usage to under 50M.
    2) Dump to tape with cpio, tar doesn't handle device nodes properly.
    3) Use HDToolbox to shink the partition. Actually UNIX rdb would
       be better as it handles UNIX partitions properly but it's
       obtuse and not very "user friendly"
    4) Boot floppy UNIX and run mkfs with the new partition size. To make
       a 50M partition UNIX recognises as only 50M.
    5) Restore from tape and reboot.

    6) Do this right and get a 340M SCSI harddrive...

    I'll leave the details to you as there are too many to elaborate
    over USENET or email. I'd suggest printing out the man pages for
    AmigaUNIX rdb, UFS mkfs and any other UNIX tools you may need while
    working under the boot floppy UNIX.

    I'll finish up by bluntly stating that if you don't have a large
    NFS partition you can put stuff on to an AmigaUNIX system with
    anything less than a 210M disk is useless, there are no canned apps
    for AmigaUNIX so everything has to be compiled. With a 200M or
    so NFS filesystem you can conceivably get a 100M disk to work
    although it will be slow since most stuff is going over the
    network. You'll also want at least 8M of memory since you'll
    be using the network pretty heavily.

    AmigaUNIX was never written to depend mostly on NFS for fileservice,
    that would have come later. It very much needs root, /usr and swap
    to be on a local SCSI disk of at least 200M in size if it is to
    be used for X and development work.

        -Rob
p.s.
    Don't forget the 2.1 2a OS patch disk, it has an ethernet patch
    you may need to get NFS working OK on the University network.