[Zope] Re: Packing Data.fs

[Duncan Booth]

Tres Seaver wrote:

> Mark Gibson wrote:
>> I know zope makes a copy of Data.fs before packing.  Is it possible to
>> specify a location other than <zope>/var to place that copy?
> 
> Actually, it makes a *new* file when packing, and then unlinks the old
> file and re-links the copy under its name after finishing the pack
> successfully.  If you are looking to "spread the love" across multiple
> partitions, you can symlink the original file into a directory on
> another drive / partition, and then do the pack there.  One the pack
> completes, you can move or copy the packed version back to the original
> directory.
> 
I recently had to move a fairly large Data.fs onto a different partition, 
but just copying it would have involved downtime (at least for 
authoring) that I wanted to avoid. 

The solution I came up with was to create a var folder on the new partition 
symlinking back to Data.fs in the original location. Then I switched ZEO to 
using the var on the new partition and packed the database. After packing 
the database was on the new partition with no downtime apart from a single 
ZEO restart.