LVM on a laptop

[William John Murray]

   Hello all,
            I just faced a laptop problem: How to shrink the FC4
allocated space in order to increase the space on another operating
system. I had used the default LVM. 
  A trusty knoppix liveCD QTparted knows nothing of LVM, so I tried the
FC4 rescue. After a long time, I found:
   * resize2fs shrinks the ext3 / area. OK
   * lvm lvreduce shrinks the logical volume (different units)
   * lvm pvmove allows me to put all the lvm handled stuff physically
together. More different units.
   * vgreduce...fails
 
  I think I was supposed to use vgreduce to shrink the space managed in
the volume group - but I couldn't make it work. It only seems to delete
logical volumes.
  Finally I reversed all the above operation. Since they are all in
different units, and I had padded a little to be safe, I had to pad
some more on the way back, and now I have wasted space.

  Two questions:
  *) How could I have made it work?
  *) What benefit is there in lvm on a laptop, when you pretty much know
there will only be 1 disk?

   Thank you!
          Bill