I'm using Ubuntu Server 20.04, and have access to a remote server via SSH.
I need more room in the root FS, and so have made a copy of the /var
directory on another partition. I've then added to my /etc/fstab
to make it mount the new /dev/sdX2
over the old /var
.
All is well... df -h /var
indicates that it's using the newly mounted version.
However, I now can't remove the original one to free up the space that I so badly need. If I run mount --bind / /mnt/root
, and then try to do anything, like mv /mnt/root/var /mnt/root/var.old
, I get: mv: cannot move 'var' to 'var.old': Device or resource busy
.
As this is only really accessible through SSH, I can't get in to single user mode.
So, the only other thing I can think of is to have a script that will move the original /var
directory to /var.old
, and then, once I can see everything is working correctly, remove it once and for all.
The main issue is that this script will need to load beforefstab
or anything hooks in to var
, and I'm not even sure if that's possible?
Any other ideas?