On 26 May 2010 15:12, Matthew Daubney <m...@daubers.co.uk> wrote: > On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 14:46 +0100, Rowan Berkeley wrote: >> On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 13:51 +0100, Neil Greenwood >> <neil.greenwood....@gmail.com> wrote: >> > On 26 May 2010 07:29, Rowan Berkeley <rowan.berke...@googlemail.com> >> > wrote: >> > > On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 20:58 +0100, Matthew Daubney >> > <m...@daubers.co.uk> >> > > wrote: >> > >> This is an incredibly dangerous idea. When you're mucking around >> > >> with partitions it is very, _very_, UNsafe to have the _device_ >> > >> mounted. Having been building storage systems for the past 8 >> > >> months, I've dealt with things in terrible states, one of the >> > >> causes being people believing that repartitioning with a volume >> > >> mounted is a good idea. Matt Daubney >> >> > > Thank you Matt for telling me that you have actually seen drives >> > > messed up in this way. I still wonder why it should be so incredibly >> > > dangerous but you have convinced me that it is. Rowan >> >> > The why is because other programs could be trying to update bits of >> > the disc as gparted tries to move it. It's a bit like trying to change >> > the wheel on a car that doesn't have the handbrake on - it *might* not >> > move... Cofion/Regards, Neil. >> >> Quite so, but all the program files and associated data are in sda1, >> which remains mounted. The only things in the partitions that are being >> moved are the swap space and the user files. The swap space could >> certainly be called on while one was moving it, but there are special >> procedures to cope with this, namely making a new swap space where you >> want it, then somehow setting the machine to switch over from using the >> old swap space to the new swap space next time it starts up, thus >> avoiding any overlaps. At least, I assume that is the idea. The user >> files (My Documents, My Music, etc.) are not updated by anything. The >> whole essence of this is that one is not talking about unmounting the >> entire internal hard disk; each partition can be separately mounted and >> unmounted, hopefully without affecting the others. >> > > type 'ps axf' in a terminal while you're doing nothing. How many of > those running processes do you know enough about to guarantee none of > them won't try and access the partition you're monkeying with? > > 1,2? I'd really be surprised if it was all of them. Running from a live > CD reduces this risk significantly. > > Seriously, I believe in the idea of "For every problem that I can think > of, there are 10 I can't". > > -Matt Daubney > > > -- > ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ >
'lsof' is another fun command - it shows what processes have what files open. 'lsof | grep /home' shows you what files in the home directory are open. Surely when the /home filesystem is unmounted, any attempt to access /home will access the folder /home stored on the root partition, and not on the /home filesystem? -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
