AddExtraHardDisk

Add extra harddisk

This HowTo are based on Michiel Blotwijk original.

Description

How to add an extra hard disk to an existing SME server.

It assumes adding one PATA harddrive, but the process will be similar in other situations.

The harddrive will be named bigdisk, you can choose whatever, just keep track of the name.

Step-by-step HowTo

1 Preparation

1.0 Mount the harddrive and fire up your machine.

1.1 Get shell access and login as root.

1.2 Switch to single-user mode.

telinit 1

2 Partition

2.0 Now you need to identify the device name of the new disk.

The following command will show you all the drives on your server (including any USB drives you might have).

fdisk -l | more 

Overwiev of harddrives:
Role IDE Device
Master 1 /dev/hda
Slave 1 /dev/hdb
Master 2 /dev/hdc
Slave 2 /dev/hdd

My intention was to have a nice table instead, but I couldn't get it right. You can see it at the end.

2.1 Let's assume you installed the disk as master on the second IDE controller.
This means you have to partition /dev/hdc

fdisk /dev/hdc

and when prompted:

n (to add a new partition)
p (to make a primary partion)
1 (that's the number one, the number you want to assign to the partition)

Accept the suggested first & last cylinder values

w (write and exit)

This will create the primary partition /dev/hdc1, using the entire disk space.

2.2 Format the new partition:

mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdc1

2.3 Convert the partition to the ext3 format:

tune2fs -j /dev/hdc1

3 Mount

Create a mounting point for the new disk

A mounting point is just an empty directory that will link to your new disk.
This can be any valid directory on your server, but it is recommended not to use /home or one of its subdirectories.
In step 4 you will see a much better method to link your /home directory to the second disk.

3.0 Create a directory underneath /mnt

mkdir /mnt/bigdisk

3.1 Automount at boot time
To automatically mount the partition at boot time, you need to add the following line to the file /etc/fstab
It can be done in the text editor Pico

pico /etc/fstab /dev/hdc1 /mnt/bigdisk ext3 usrquota,grpquota 1 2 

Make sure you end this line with a newline. Hit <ctrl-x> to exit the editor

3.2 Mount manually (this time) all filesystems listed in /etc/fstab

mount -a

3.3 Report the amount of free disk space available on all mounted filesystems + the type of each filesystem, check if it looks OK.

df -T

Filesystem Type 1k-blocks Used     Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3  ext3 39151724  28441348 8721532   77%  /
/dev/hda1  ext3 101089    8953     86917     10%  /boot
/dev/hdc1  ext3 38474956  27948    38447008   0%  /mnt/bigdisk

If you don't see a line for /dev/hdc1, something went wrong.
Go back to step 2 and check if you followed all instructions correctly.

4 Mapping

4.0 Alternatives

Alternative 1: Use /home to mount the new disk

On standard Linux machines, the /home directory contains the user's directories and is therefore a popular place to mount a bigger disk.

However, on a SME server this is not a good idea:

SME stores all its configuration files in /home/e-smith/db.
If for whatever reason your disk doesn't mount, the configuration files will no longer be accessible, causing all kinds of nasty problems.

Mounting your second disk to /home or even /home/e-smith/files effectively means that your first disk will no longer be used to store user files.
In some cases that might be a good idea, but in most cases you are just wasting the remaining space of your first disk.

Alternative 2: A much better approach is to leave the second disk mounted at /mnt/bigdisk and to create symlinks (symbolic links) for specific ibays or user folders.

The following example shows you how to place the mp3 ibay on the second disk.

4.1 Create the necessary subdirectories on your second disk

mkdir -p /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3

4.2 Apply the ownerships and permissions from the original directory

ls -l /home/e-smith/files/ibays

drwxrwxr-x 18 admin allstaff 4096 Sep 23 14:48 mp3

4.3 Change ownership

chown admin:allstaff /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3

4.4 Set permissions

chmod 775 /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 

4.5 Copy the content to your new disk

cp -rip /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mp3/* /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 

4.6 Check if all files have been copied correctly

diff -r /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mp3 

4.7 Remove the original files

rm -rf /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mp3 

4.8 Create a symlink to the new location

ln -s /mnt/bigdisk/ibays/mp3 /home/e-smith/files/mp3 

4.9 Test the new location

ls /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mp3

4.10 If you want the ibay to be accessible from the internet, you also need to enable "follow symlinks" in apache:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

echo Options FollowSymLinks >> /etc/e-smith/templates custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/85DefaultAccess

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

/etc/init.d/httpd graceful

5 Quota

Next you might want to activate the quota on the disk (optional). This will only work if you activated quota management for at least one user (Server Manager > Collaboration > Quota Management).

quotacheck -vugc /dev/hdc1

If quotachecks comes back to the command prompt without errors, you're ready.

6 Final check

Reboot your machine

reboot

Check if the drive was mounted correctly with

df -T

and/or surf to your ibay.

If it looks fine, relax and tell the world about it, you made it!

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Partition overwiev

Role	IDE controller	Device name
Master	1	/dev/hda
Slave	1	/dev/hdb
Master	2	/dev/hdc
Slave	2	/dev/hdd