Mayur's BLOG

Hi guys,

you might have faced the issue of /var partition gettting full regularly due to database directory. If you have a larger partition with free space, then it is possible to move the database directory to the larger partition.

Here are the steps

Switch off the database server while we are moving the databases.

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql stop

I am considering that I have enough space in /home partition. Here goes my new database data directory as /home/mysql

Now it is better to copy the database first, rather than move.

cp -pr /var/lib/mysql /home
mv /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql-bk

We are copying the database to the new location since it is better to revert back the settings with minimum downtime, if anything goes wrong.

move to /tmp

cd /tmp
unlink mysql.sock
ln -s /home/mysql/mysql.sock /tmp/mysql.sock

Take a backup of /etc/my.cnf

Now edit /etc/my.cnf

vi /etc/my.cnf

add the line
datadir=/home/mysql

If the socket file is specified, comment it out.

Now move to /var/lib/mysql and create a symblink

ln -s /home/mysql /var/lib/mysql

(Please note that you don’t specify the socket file location in my.cnf since it causes issues with phpMyadmin)

For, cPanel server, edit the phpMyadmin configuration
take a backup of “/usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php”

edit this file /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php
vi /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php

add the following lines. If they already exist, edit as below.
(the connect_type usually exist at “tcp” change it to “socket”)

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = ‘/home/mysql/mysql.sock’;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = ’socket’;

Now start the database server.

/etc/rc.d/ini.d/mysql start

If it starts fine, you are done. Check the database connections of your site.
You can now remove the directory /var/lib/mysql-bk

Suggestions, questions are welcome.