FC5T2 anaconda and LVM

[Paul Michael Reilly]

Chris Gordon <chris at linux-dr.net> writes:

 > Mime-Version: 1.0
 > Reply-To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
 > 
 > 
 > > Just what are the main advantages to LVM over just a
 > > plain jane ext2 (3) system? Is there a speed penalty
 > > if you are not using RAID? Any thoughts would be
 > > appreciated.... still updating the ole brain ROMs. Ric
 > 
 > LVM gives you more flexibility.  Essentially you take a disk partition
 > and can then cut it up into logical volumes which you then place normal
 > file systems on.  This can allow you to expand, create and remove
 > filesystems without having to touch the the disk partition table or
 > worry about the location space on the physical disk.
 > 
 > Consider this situation.  You have a disk with three partitions:  hda1,
 > hda2, and hda3.  You've sized them and created file systems as based on
 > your best initial plans.  As times moves along, you end up no longer
 > needed hda1 -- whatever the function of it was is no longer a
 > requirement/need for your system.  During the same time, though, you've
 > filled up hda3.  In this situation, if you want to recover the space for
 > hda1 and "add" it to hda3, you've got a good bit of work to do in moving
 > hda2 around.  Not a pleasant situation.
 > 
 > With LVM, you would have made all of hda into a single PV and then a
 > single VG.  Within that VG you could have created 3 LVs (logical
 > volumes) and put the filesystems on them.  Then when you no longer
 > needed stuff in the first file system, just unmount it and destroy that
 > LV.  Then you could expand the third LV and grow the filesystem on it
 > (even can do it all online now without ever taking the box down).
 > 
 > In the traditional volume example, hda2 sits in the middle of the space
 > you want to use and makes things rather difficult.  With a volume
 > manager, the exact placement of things on the physical volume is
 > abstracted and there is no issue.  The ability to easily work with the
 > volumes is also a plus.
 > 
 > Hope that helped.

Excellent response.

Thanks,

-pmr