On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:10, Anne Wilson wrote: > ...> > > risky to do a mv instead of cp. Also, when you finished mounting > > /dev/hde10 you'd end up with /usr/usr, which won't work. > > > Oops - I think I've been unclear again. I meant, once I have > everything in the right place in the new /usr, I need to rename the > old /usr so that the poor system doesn't get its knickers in a twist. > It's at that point that I thought I should use mv. Am I wrong? > > Anne >
Ah. Actually, this is kind of a mind bender, so it might be useful to cd /tmp and make a few directories and files to test with so you can be comfortable that it really works like this. When you mount a partition at a mount point, the old contents of that mountpoint are not disturbed. In other words, the old /usr will still be there, you just won't be able to use it until you've umount'ed /dev/hde10. Basically, we think of a directory as a folder containing pieces of paper which are files, but in real life it's more like a single piece of paper with a list of files written on it. This mount trick is like laying another piece of paper with another list of files on top of the first one. The actual files "in" either directory are scattered willy-nilly all over the partition and all a "directory" does is provide pointers on where to find them. Think about this a while longer and symlinks will start to make a lot more sense too :-) HTH, -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture...
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
