RS/6000 -- why can't I move /usr somewhere else?

[J. Eric Townsend]

In article <MARC.90Dec20083105 at marc.watson.ibm.com> marc at arnor.uucp writes:
>You have (or had) a number of choices.
>1.  Add the wren to the root volume group.  If you had done this, and
>could get away with ignoring which disk data was on, you would have
>been done.  Just grow the various file systems and paging space as you
>like.

Bzzzt, but thank you for playing.  If you install the OS on the Wren
(instead of the internal 120) the default paging space gets put
there as well *AND YOU CAN'T GET RID OF IT*!  ie:  I decided to put
*everything* sans paging on the Wren, and allocate the 120 as paging
only.

Everything went fine until I went to remove the default paging
(/dev/hd6?) that was installed on the wren.  I did just what the
docs told me and set the paging space so that it wouldn't be automagically
used on reboot. But, I couldn't get rid of it.  I even grepped for all
occurances of the device in /etc and replaced them with the paging
device I wanted to use.  But the cat came back the very next day.

AIX *still* used the external paging device.  To make things worse,
it uses it *first*.  If I *have* to use the "default installation" paging
device, I should at least be able to change its place in the "what
do I use first queue".  Anybody who has the DASD 120 will agree that it
screams in comparison to a Segate Wren on the SCSI bus...

>2.  Install with the wren as the root volume group.  There is a menu
>[...]
>not easy) to move volume groups around after install.)  You could then make
>the 120 a second volume group, and put most of the paging space on it.

Yeah, great.  So I have to use up 16Mb of really slow paging space
before I get to the fast paging space.

>4.  Add the wren to the root volume group, and then move /usr
>completely on to it.  This, I think, takes some wizardry and doing
>some of the steps in maintenance mode.  But I think its possible.

Um, every time I tried to edit /etc/filesystems and reboot the machine
refused to come back up.  Do you know a trick I don't know?

>5.  Install on the wren, then add the 120 to the root volume group
>later, and move paging space to it.

Again, the *original* paging space won't go away.  Something somewhere
deep inside the pit of AIX insists on activating it.

Just in case I didn't explain earlier, here's how I'd like to set things
up:

Server:
internal drive (the fast DASD 120): / and paging
external drives (scsi): everything else.

Clients:
internal drive (the fast DASD 120): / and paging
nfs mount everything else from the server.

--
J. Eric Townsend     Internet: jet at uh.edu    Bitnet: jet at UHOU
Systems Mangler - UH Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120
"If you are the system administrator and this is the first time you are
logging into your system, use the login name root." -- IBM RS/6000 docs