Bonehead Move, LVM
Michael A Peters
mpeters at mac.com
Thu Feb 15 18:54:43 UTC 2007
On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 17:37 +0000, Andy Green wrote:
> Michael A Peters wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 15:50 +0000, Andy Green wrote:
> >> Michael A Peters wrote:
> >>
> >>> LVM allows easy resizing of partitions, something you can not safely do
> >>> with ext2 partitions without LVM. LVM avoids the need to completely back
> >>> up and restore a drive because the average user was not psychic enough
> >>> to know how things should be laid out to be space efficient 2 years post
> >>> install.
> >>>
> >>> LVM allows you to leave lots of unused space so that you can use it
> >>> where you need it when you need it without having to fuss with mount
> >>> points and figuring out how to make the mount points integrate most
> >>> effectively into your file system.
> >> This is true, but it's a curious thing: these cures are for diseases
> >> caused by fragmenting the storage space into fixed closed
> >> partition-subworlds in the first place. You can get the same joy in
> >> your life by just having a single fully sized / partition and none of
> >> this complex stuff piled upon constricting stuff delivering nothing
> >> going on.
> >
> > Unfortunately there is no way to do a clean install while preserving
> > some data if it is all one partition.
>
> "No way?" I didn't try it, but booting to runlevel 1 and rm -rf /usr
> /boot before booting into the installation media for the "clean" install
> of FC(n+1) should get you to the same place.
If /usr/local is not a separate partition that is unmounted first, that
would get you into some trouble. You probably would also want to
wipe /etc and /var (though if you haven't moved apache, mysql, etc data
to /srv first that may also get you into trouble with lost data)
> Without having to chafe on
> pointless restrictions and a huge workaround software stack between you
> and your storage during the 9 months between needing to do that.
>
> Are there any other reasons to have partitions and LVM on boxes with one
> storage device and no possibility for internal expansion?
I found in nice when installing TeXLive. Since TeXLive is self
contained, I just created a new /texlive partition so I don't have to
wipe it. I suppose though that such data would also be preserved if
removing /usr /etc /var /lib /bin manually.
I would boot off a knoppix CD rather than boot into run level 1 to do it
though if I was going to do that. For me, it's just easier to keep use
separate logical volumes.
Another advantage of separate logical volumes / partitions - you can
make a new partition to install the new OS into so you can boot into the
old OS if you need to (IE when something critical is broken in new
release). I do that on my desktop, but not my laptop. I don't install a
new Fedora on my laptop until everything I need works on the Desktop.
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