Very Computer

I let a local PC dealer setup a dual boot linux /win98 machine for me and it
cost a ton.
And they really goofed up with druid.

They let a 6 gig area of the disk go uninitialized as they thought it would
"grow".  It turns out that is only at
install time, not during normal run conditions.

I found out the hard way.  Loading Staroffice

So..I zapped the win D drive and made it into a linux partition and mounted
it first as /home
because /home is easier and I can do that.
(I use gnome to rename directories and cannot do that at linux text level)

I got a suggestion to mount instead /usr but /usr has all the xwindows stuff
and gnome and
then I cannot change the names of  /nusr (the new usr dir) and /usr.

How does one change directory names aside from inside Gnome / properties?

Thanks

This it taking way too long.

Quote:>How does one change directory names aside from inside Gnome / properties?

Why not just use the shell?
--

I-Con's Science and Technology Programming
<http://www.iconsf.org/>

Hmm, maybe because he was askingus how to?

"mv" will change directory names, just like it does files.  A couple of
warnings though:

-mv will not overite a target directory.  "mv /nusr /usr" will create
/usr/nusr/ if /usr already exists.

-DO NOTE simply DELETE /usr, even if /nusr has everything in it already.  You
 have to be VERY careful with all the dynamic libraries locations listed in
 /etc/ld.so.conf or you will find that all of a sudden none of your
 executables will work anymore.  I just checked my system and "mv," "cp" et
 al. link to libraries in "/lib" so you'd probably be okay (though the GUI
 stuff in X will definitely not run until you put the X libraries where they
 belong and run "ldconfig" as root.

I'm afraid this was a little confusing, so post back with q's if I wasn't
clear.

Chris

:>How does one change directory names aside from inside Gnome / properties?

: Why not just use the shell?
: --

: I-Con's Science and Technology Programming
: <http://www.iconsf.org/>

Quote:>I let a local PC dealer setup a dual boot linux /win98 machine for me and it
>cost a ton.
>And they really goofed up with druid.
>They let a 6 gig area of the disk go uninitialized as they thought it would
>"grow".  It turns out that is only at
>install time, not during normal run conditions.
>I found out the hard way.  Loading Staroffice

OK, where did you try to install Staroffice.

Quote:>So..I zapped the win D drive and made it into a linux partition and mounted
>it first as /home
>because /home is easier and I can do that.

Yes, so you know how to mount it as some directory name.

Quote:>I got a suggestion to mount instead /usr but /usr has all the xwindows stuff
>and gnome and
>then I cannot change the names of  /nusr (the new usr dir) and /usr.

/usr contains a lot, and is dangerous to replace. You must make sure
that the new /usr contains everything that the old /usr did, or you will
have a completely broken system. It may in fact be far easier to just
reinstall.

iYou have not told us what the present setup is. I will assume that
there is just one Linux partition, the / partition, containing
everything. Now you want to to have two, one is / and the other /usr.

a) set up the new partition and mount it as /nusr . copy everyting from
the /usr tree to the /nusr directory.
eg
cd /usr
tar -cf - . |(cd /nusr;tar -xpf -)

When that is done, reboot the machine, but at the LILO prompt, do
linux 1
this will put you as root into single user mode. Now edit /etc/fstab
and put in a line like
/dev/hda6  /usr  ext2 defaults  1 2
where hda6 should be replaced by the partition on which you actually
have the new /usr partion.

Then do
mv /usr /old-usr
mkdir /usr
chmod a+rx /usr
mount -a
check that you now have a /usr with everything in it, and that no errors
cropped up in that mount.

Now reboot
You should now find that your new partition is mounted as /usr.
check again to make sure that everything in /old-usr is in /usr.
Then erase /old-usr
rm -r /old-usr
and you are set.

Quote:>How does one change directory names aside from inside Gnome / properties?
>Thanks
>This it taking way too long.

Not clear what you mean by "changing directory names from inside Gnome /
properties".  One thought however is to look at using symbolic links to
redirect directories to the new linux partition.  For example, if you
want directory "/usr/local/pete" to use space in the new  partition,
create a directory in the new Linux partition (for instance
/newpartition/pete) and then do the following:

ln -s /newpartition/pete /usr/local/pete

The above assumes that prior to executing the ln command, the
/usr/local/pete directory does not yet exist.  If you already have a lot
of data in /usr/local/pete, rename the direcotory temporarily
(/usr/loca/pete.old for example) and perform the ln command.  Then, you
can copy back all the files/directories in pete.old to the new pete.
One way to do this is to cd to /usr/local/pete.old and execute the
following:

find . -print | cpio -pdumv /usr/local/pete

At this point, all file access to /usr/local/pete is actually to the
newly created partition. The above is an old remedy used by
administrators when file systems run out of space.

        You should probably try to get your money back if they're
really as incompotent as you've hinted at.

        Anyway, if you're just wanting to rename files and
directories, use `mv`.  For example:

$ ls -F
olddirname/
$ mv olddirname newdirname
$ ls -F
newdirname/

        You can also use the `man` or `info` commands to look at the
documentation for other commands, such as `mv`.  (eg - `man mv` will
display the manual for `mv`)

        That said, I don't really understand what you're trying to
do.  Well, I understand up to where you mounted the old D drive as
/home.  What happened to the original /home?  And why would you mount
the new partition as /usr?  That doesn't sound like such a good idea.
If you really want those 6 gigs used for every day stuff, you might as
well just reinstall.  Redhat's latest releases make the install rather
painless.  Plus, you'll learn a lot more about Linux (which is, I
assume, what you want to do? :) by installing yourself.

--pc

--

"My mom says I'm the handsomest guy in school."

The short answer is 'mv', ('man mv' if you have questions), but here's an
answer to what I think you really want to do.  Hope this helps.

Okay, so if I got you right, you have some smallish partition for / right
now, let's call it /dev/hda1 (you'll need to substitute in your real
names), and then some other /dev/hda3 that is biggish that has until now
been a win98 partition, right?  Assuming you already ran mkfs (or mke2fs
or whatever), and you want to make the /dev/hda3 (new) partition into
/usr, you do something like the following (as root):
(things after # are comments, you don't need to type them)
        init 1 # single-user mode, you probably don't want to copy /usr
               # while daemons are running, this stops all of them
# at this point it probably asks for the root password
        mkdir /mnt # /mnt probably already exists
        mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3 /mnt # mount the new partition
        cp -av /usr/* /mnt/ # copy w/ verbose and archive [permissions,etc.]
        mv /usr /old-usr # rename the old one so you still have access to it
        pico /etc/fstab

in fstab add a line like:
        /dev/hda3       /usr    ext2    defaults        0       2
the 2 doesn't matter much, you may want to use adifferent number, it just
selects which order it checks thedisks in if you boot up funny.

single-user mode, try running 'reboot').

If it doesn't work on bootup.

At first utilities like GNOME etc. seem simpler, and if you don't use the
machine much, they might really be...but the shell is actually a simpler
program to work with, and once you learn how to use it, it's a lot faster.
If you know DOS command line okay, then
http://www.sietch.dhs.org/~galexand/DOS2Linux.txt provides a decent
introduction (the hardest part is finding out command names when you're
first starting, there is some validity to the "they named thing sstupidly"
complaint about Unix).  I didn't write the text, and I haven't looked at
it in a while, so I hope there's nothing dated about it. :)