LVM -- removing logical volumes from a file system

[Paul Howarth]

tokyoi at mac.com wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have come to the conclusion that I would be better off managing the 
> partitions on my system (fully updated FC5, KDE) myself, rather than 
> wandering through the ethereal reaches of the LV system. The GUI is a 
> dead loss, not least because it keeps telling me that elements of the 
> system are uninitialized when I am actually using them on a daily basis. 
> The command-line LVM programme is more appealing but I am not really 
> sure as to what will happen to my system -- as in the physical bits and 
> bobs -- if I tell lvm to remove a volume. Am I right in thinking that 
> the various commands to remove volumes simply mean that logical volume 
> management is disabled and that the data remains intact, for me to 
> administer it again via fdisk and /etc/fstab? I have more backups than 
> Soft Mick but would rather leave them as an unused comfort zone. I have 
> looked through the man pages and the like but would appreciate 
> confirmation from those who are more knowledgeable than I.

You'll lose the data if you delete the volume it's on.

Deleting a logical volume will not free up any space for regular 
partitions either. To do that, you would have to be able to remove a 
physical volume. To do that, you would would have to be able to migrate 
all data off that volume on to another physical volume assigned to the 
same volume group. In the default setup with one hard disk, there is 
only one physical volume and so you can't do it. So if you really want 
to get rid of LVM, you're going to have to reinstall.

Paul.