Re: How to access contents of directory underneath mounted volume?

[Glynn Clements <glynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Guy Waugh wrote:

> On a RHEL4 host, I have a mountpoint, /thing, with a SAN volume mounted 
> at this mountpoint.
> 
> The local volume that contains the mountpoint (i.e. the volume that is 
> mounted at /) is nearly full, and I'm suspecting it is because there are 
> files on the local volume in the /thing directory. Of course, I can't 
> get to the /thing directory by normal means (at least AFAIK), because 
> there is currently a volume mounted at that mountpoint.
> 
> Does anyone know if it possible to access (i.e. see and delete) the 
> files in the /thing directory without having to umount the SAN volume 
> that is mounted at /thing?

If some existing process has its CWD underneath /thing, then you can
access that directory via /proc/<pid>/cwd.

You could use debugfs on the root fs, but I wouldn't recommend trying
to modify a filesystem while it's mounted r/w.

If you can't unmount the SAN because it's busy, you may still be able
to move its mount point with "mount --move". If you can allow for it
being unavailable briefly you could move it off just long enough to
rename the underlying directory, e.g.:

	mkdir /thing.tmp
	mount --move /thing /thing.tmp
	mv /thing /thing.orig
	mkdir /thing
	mount --move /thing.tmp /thing
	rmdir /thing.tmp

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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