Increasing /var partition

[technossomy]

I am looking to increase the var partition on a FreeBSD 6.3 installation, but am encountering this alert message:

"One or more partitions from this disk are mounted, there the partition layout cannot be altered.
Unmount the particular partitions first or use a bootable CD-ROM operating system to partition this disk if this is a system partition that cannot be unmounted (eg / or /dev)"

I understand this to mean that only an alternative kernel is authorised to repartition. Does this message mean that I should be using a live CD and if so, will also Linux do? Does this also mean that only partitions can be edited which do not contain system files?

[greimer]

Although your errors message refers only to "some partitions" being mounted, I suspect that the one really causing the problem is /var itself. I would not expect that you'd be able to alter the partition size of a partition that is mounted.

If your disk has spare, unused partitions, paehaps you can mount up an empty one someplace, copy the existing /var into it, change your /etc/fstab (or equivalent?) to mount this new partition as /var, and reboot. Then the "real" /var will not be mounted, and you may be able to alter the partition size.

if there are no free partitions, maybe you can insert a 2nd disk and use a partition on it for a temporary /var.