1

I am running out of space on my main SSD. I just realized that Dropbox and Megasync are mounted and syncing on sda2 which is on this drive (which accounts for most of space), although I thought I'd mounted them on sdb1 which is on a much larger HDD.

I have 3 questions:

  1. Is there a way I can easily remount them on sdb1 from the terminal or will I have to reinstall?
  2. Is it actually possible to sync from a directory that is not mounted on root?
  3. Can I mount the whole /home directory on /dev/sdb so all files are there and the SSD is kept free for processing?

System info:

  • Operating System: Ubuntu Studio 22.04
  • KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.7
  • KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0
  • Qt Version: 5.15.3
  • Kernel Version: 6.2.0-1017-lowlatency (64-bit)
  • Graphics Platform: X11
  • Processors: 12 × Intel Xeon CPU E5-1650 v3 @ 3.50GHz
  • Memory: 31.3 GB RAM
  • Graphics Processor: Quadro K2200/PCIe/SSE2
SMBIOS 2.8 present.
Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
        Product Name: HP Z440 Workstation
        Version: Not Specified
        Serial Number: CZC615BPGD
        UUID: 8ec24007-035d-11e6-9c43-bc00000c0000
        Wake-up Type: Power Switch
        SKU Number: F5W13AV
        Family: 103C_53335X G=D

Handle 0x0006, DMI type 32, 11 bytes
System Boot Information
        Status: No errors detected


NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0    7:0    0  55.7M  1 loop /snap/core18/2796
loop1    7:1    0  55.7M  1 loop /snap/core18/2812
loop2    7:2    0     4K  1 loop /snap/bare/5
loop3    7:3    0  63.4M  1 loop /snap/core20/1974
loop4    7:4    0  63.5M  1 loop /snap/core20/2015
loop5    7:5    0  73.9M  1 loop /snap/core22/864
loop6    7:6    0   6.4M  1 loop /snap/curl/1754
loop7    7:7    0 240.3M  1 loop /snap/firefox/3358
loop8    7:8    0 245.6M  1 loop /snap/firefox/3416
loop9    7:9    0 164.8M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/198
loop10   7:10   0 349.7M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-38-2004/143
loop11   7:11   0   497M  1 loop /snap/gnome-42-2204/141
loop12   7:12   0  91.7M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1535
loop13   7:13   0 130.8M  1 loop /snap/heroic/265
loop14   7:14   0 130.8M  1 loop /snap/heroic/290
loop15   7:15   0  40.8M  1 loop /snap/snapd/20092
loop16   7:16   0  40.9M  1 loop /snap/snapd/20290
loop17   7:17   0  74.1M  1 loop /snap/core22/1033
sda      8:0    1 238.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    1   300M  0 part /boot/efi
└─sda2   8:2    1 238.2G  0 part /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell
                                 /
sdb      8:16   1   1.8T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   1.8T  0 part /media/jamesm/Graceland
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
karel
  • 114,770
freshflyingfish
  • 23

1 Answers1

0

Is there a way I can easily remount them on sdb1 from the terminal or will I have to reinstall?

By default, the locations where these cloud sync applications store the data are determined by the application. for example, Dropbox by default creates a ~/Dropbox directory to store the synced data. Whether and how you can change the locations where these tools store the data depends on the tool, and can be found from either their documentation or dedicated support forums.

Is it actually possible to sync from a directory that is not mounted on root?

Again, this merely depend on what these tools allow you to do.

Can I mount the whole /home directory on /dev/sdb so all files are there and the SSD is kept free for processing?

Yes, you can, but that has wider implications than controlling where these tools sync data.

If you cannot change the location where these tools look for their data, then you can have them look on a different location either by using symbolic links (by far easiest, but I am not sure if that will work with either of these tools, or by redirecting to the different location using a bound --bind (somewhat more complicated to set this up, but guaranteed to work with each of these tools).

I recommend you start testing if a simple symbolic link works. Stop the Dropbox daemon. Move e.g. the "Dropbox" directory to a new drive. Then, create a symbolic link in the original location with the name "Dropbox" and restart the daemon. Check if that works.

If that does not work, a bound --bind surely will work. The --bind option allows to mount one directory on another. Thus again, move e.g. the "Dropbox" folder to the new location, leave an empty "Dropbox" folder in the original location, and then mount the moved Dropbox folder on the empty folder in the original location. To automate that process, you can add a line that sets up the mount in /etc/fstab.

vanadium
  • 88,010
  • Thanks vanadium for a super helpful and very clear reply. It'll be a few days before I get to it, but I'll try these solutions and let you know how I go. – freshflyingfish Dec 10 '23 at 21:04