Is it safe to symlink complete /var directory

mountsymlink

Is it safe to move complete /var directory in separate partition and create symlink to it?

mv /var /mnt/storage
ln -s /mnt/storage /var

Distribution is Google Cloud CentOS Image

I do not want to use bind mount due the following reasons:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/49623/are-there-any-drawbacks-from-using-mount-bind-as-a-substitute-for-symbolic-lin

Best Answer

I don't know any reason that this shouldn't work. Symlinks are a standard feature of Linux filesystems, that are recognized and used correctly by every utility I know of.

I've never symlinked all of /var, but I've done large parts of it. It worked fine. Just make sure the permissions are set correctly on /mnt/storage.

Related Solutions

Linux – How to Zip/Compress a Symlink

You can store symlinks as symlinks (as opposed to a copy of the file/directory they point to) using the --symlinks parameter of the standard zip.

Assuming foo is a directory containing symlinks:

zip --symlinks -r foo.zip foo/

Rar equivalent:

rar a -ol foo.rar foo/

tar stores them as is by default.

tar czpvf foo.tgz foo/

Note that the symlink occupies almost no disk space by itself (just an inode). It's just a kind of pointer in the filesystem, as you probably know.

Linux – How to do a bind mount over a symlink

Since /test is not a real directory, this won't work.
Unlink it, create it as a real directory, then do the bind mount.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to Zip/Compress a Symlink

Linux – How to do a bind mount over a symlink

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