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I recently got an SSD for my computer. Therefore I reinstalled my system and mounted / on /dev/sda1 (which is a partition on the SSD).

To protect the SSD, I managed to mount /tmp on the RAMdisk. However, I would also want some other folders to be outsourced, not on the SSD but on my RAID1.

The following folders should be outsourced:

  • /var/log
  • /var/cache
  • /var/games
  • /var/tmp
  • (do you have any other suggestions?)

I tried to simply mount those folders on a RAID-partition, just like I did with /tmp (find a part of my /etc/fstab below). Now I know, this was not the right way, instead I would have to use bind.

I would need your help for the following issues:

  • What preparations are necessary on the RAID (what about permissions, especially)?
  • What are the propper mount options in /etc/fstab?
  • Now that I have done it the wrong way, how would I migrate the data to the correct place (and is this even necessary for those folders?)

a wrong part of my /etc/fstab
<raid uuid> is the same for all of these lines

UUID=<raid uuid> /var/log ext4 noexec,nodev,nosuid 0 0
UUID=<raid uuid> /var/cache ext4 noexec,nodev,nosuid 0 0
UUID=<raid uuid> /var/games ext4 noexec,nodev,nosuid 0 0
UUID=<raid uuid> /var/tmp ext4 noexec,nodev,nosuid 0 0
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  • Are those UUID=<raid uuid> the same or 4 different ones? – John Siu Feb 7 '13 at 21:20
  • Have you considered mounting /var instead of 4 individual partitions? And why not use standard defaults options when mounting? – Karlson Feb 7 '13 at 21:25
  • I just wanted to outsource folders with frequent write operations - the choice of those four folders traces back to a german page (wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSD/Auslagerung#Unterverzeichnisse-von-var). I also copied settings from there... however, I don't know if this is a good choice - I'm very open for arguments! – Marcel Feb 7 '13 at 21:30
  • @JohnSiu the same - one of the reason why it's wrong! – Marcel Feb 7 '13 at 21:32
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    Why 2 cache? Is it a typo? – John Siu Feb 7 '13 at 21:52
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  1. Mount the raid partition to /mnt/var

    UUID=<raid uuid> /mnt/var ext4 defaults 0 0

    Create mount point /mnt/var

    cd /mnt; mkdir var

  2. Reboot

  3. Copy content into /mnt/var

    cp -a /var/log /mnt/var
cp -a /var/cache /mnt/var
cp -a /var/games /mnt/var
cp -a /var/tmp /mnt/var

  4. Modify fstab as follow to mount them to /var on next boot

    UUID=<raid uuid> /mnt/var ext4 defaults 0 0

/mnt/var/log   /var/log   none bind 0 0
/mnt/var/cache /var/cache none bind 0 0
/mnt/var/games /var/games none bind 0 0
/mnt/var/tmp   /var/tmp   none bind 0 0

  5. Reboot

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  • thank you! I would rather have all folders in the same partitions (as I then don't have to care about what size each partition needs). Is this possible? – Marcel Feb 7 '13 at 21:53
  • Yes, that will need to use the bind option. I will update. – John Siu Feb 7 '13 at 21:55
  • and the options are fine? or should I change them? – Marcel Feb 7 '13 at 21:58
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    Verify that they are mount as intended, type mount. – John Siu Feb 7 '13 at 22:11
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    thanks! I also want to add that df -h is good to verify that everything worked. – Marcel Feb 7 '13 at 22:22

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