[p4] Moving a depot

[Jeff A. Bowles]

Ya know, before I tried that, I might try something else...

Read up on "p4 depot" before going too far. (I just made a temporary,  
toy server area to prove this to myself....)

On the empty server, i ran "p4 depot depot" and told it that the data  
was to be located in /tmp/p4-playarea/depot/...
Then I added a file, and - sure enough - the contents files were  
under p4-playarea even though the db.* files are under P4ROOT.

If you do this with an existing database, you might need to rename a  
couple of things before accessing them. (Me, I'd send a note to Tech  
Support to make sure I did it in the right order and so on.)

But if you do it with "p4 depot depot", you are less dependent on the  
symlink in the filesystem. (And Windows system administrators might  
not have symlinks to start with!)

	-Jeff Bowles


[JAB-home:/tmp/p4-playclients/kermit] jeffbowl% p4 client
Client jab.kermit saved.
[JAB-home:/tmp/p4-playclients/kermit] jeffbowl% vi index.txt
[JAB-home:/tmp/p4-playclients/kermit] jeffbowl% p4 add index.txt
//depot/main/index.txt#1 - opened for add
[JAB-home:/tmp/p4-playclients/kermit] jeffbowl% p4 submit ...
Change 1 created with 1 open file(s).
Submitting change 1.
Locking 1 files ...
add //depot/main/index.txt#1
Change 1 submitted.
[JAB-home:/tmp/p4-playclients] jeffbowl% cd /tmp
[JAB-home:/tmp] jeffbowl% ls -CR p4*
p4d

p4-playclients:
kermit

p4-playclients/kermit:
index.txt

p4-playdata:
depot

p4-playdata/depot:
main

p4-playdata/depot/main:
index.txt,v

p4-playroot:
db.archive      db.domain       db.job          db.revcx        db.user
db.bodtext      db.fix          db.label        db.revdx        db.view
db.change       db.fixrev       db.locks        db.revhx         
db.working
db.changex      db.group        db.logger       db.review       journal
db.counters     db.have         db.protect      db.revpx        p4d
db.depot        db.integ        db.resolve      db.revsx         
typescript
db.desc         db.integed      db.rev          db.trigger
[JAB-home:/tmp] jeffbowl% p4 depots
Depot depot 2006/05/23 local /tmp/p4-playdata/depot/... 'Default depot '
[JAB-home:/tmp] jeffbowl%

On May 23, 2006, at 7:59 AM, Arthur van Dongen wrote:

> Hi List,
>
>
>
> Few years ago we created a depot as a subdirectory of the P4ROOT
> directory. Now we want to separate the archive and the database so  
> they
> exist on separate filesystems. One of the reasons is that we use  
> Amanda
> for backup and the archive + database + checkpoints do not fit on a
> tape.
>
>
>
> The server is running on Linux, so I imagine we could do the  
> following:
>
> - Stop the p4d daemon
>
> - Move the depot to a different partition
>
> - Create a symbolic link in the original location so the p4d process
> sees the files on the original path
>
> - Start the pd process
>
> - Modify the depot configuration so the p4d process accesses the files
> directly instead of through the created symbolic link
>
> - Remove the symbolic link
>
>
>
> Without the link the p4d process would run without the archive being
> available on the expected path. And the depot cannot be  
> reconfigured on
> a stopped server.
>
>
>
> What is the preferred way to do this? Any comments are welcome.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Arthur van Dongen
>
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