Mounting a new partition

Just a quick question:

If I create a new partition and mount it over a point which contains data (lets say /var), will all the data be copied over to the new partition, or will everything be destroyed?

If the answer happens to be the latter, what's the workaround?

Thanks,
Dave Y.

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No. That is, it will do neither of these things. The existing data will remains where they are, but they will be inaccessable, because the directory will now provide access to the mounted partition instead of its own contents.

The "workaround" for what actually happens is to

(a) temporarily mount the new partition somewhese different (say
at /mnt)
(b) cp the files from the old directory to the new partition
(c) umount from the temporary location
(d) mount the new partition in its new location
(e) re-HUP or restart any processes that had files in the old, now
hidden directory, open (so they write to the corresponding files in the new partition).

Once you know that everything works, you can delete the files from the old (now inaccessable) directory, by doing this same sort of multi-step process. --
-----------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [email protected]
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