How to copy /var /tmp /usr /home to seperate partitions.

Basically all you need do is follow the directions already found here in Stephens howto. . There is a caveat for /usr though. After copying /usr to another partition you must change the permissions of /tmp to 1777 or you will get .xsession errors.

chmod 1777 /tmp

Here are my partitions, their sizes (in MB) and respective mount points:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/hda3 2.8G 1.1G 1.6G 40% /
/dev/hda6 942M 184M 711M 21% /home
/dev/hda7 942M 673M 222M 76% /tmp
/dev/hda8 942M 589M 306M 66% /var
/dev/hda14 5.5G 3.1G 2.2G 60% /usr

Notice that /usr is fairly large.

New and improved method. Boot Knoppix or your favorite knoppix-flavored distro and make your partitions. Format them as ext3 (or whatever you like). Currently the installer can only format /root. Start the installer:

knoppix-installer

Configure an installation, when you finish w/ configure select Quit. Say YES to "save config?"

mcedit /root/.knofig

Edit the line that reads HD_MAP=""

I did this:

HD_MAP="/dev/hda6:/tmp /dev/hda7:/home /dev/hda9:/var"

Hit F2 to save and restart the installer. You do not need to "load config file"- it will automatically use /root/.knofig.

Twice the installer hung @ 16% when mounting a partition for /usr. (Still working on that one).

Once you fire up the installer open another term and do:

mount

You should see your parts mounted on their respective directories. If not......;)

You could also edit .knofig so that the installer doesn't check your partition size for /root. This way you could have less than a 3G part for /root. It still takes all of 2G however since we cannot yet move /usr out of the way and onto it's own partition.

thanks for the tip dude you are a real guru

i had the case i needed more disk space
i have freeing a partition for tmp but at start up, the partition was mounted but i couldn't log as normal user but root

then i wondered if i had to bother the knoppix community with my prob
before posting, i have done a search ==> mount AND xsession

your post was in the result page
then i have chmod 1777 /tmp as you said

and now it works fine

thanks dude