Fedora 7 install: DISK failure consideration

[Kam Leo]

On 6/2/07, Sebastian Gurovich <sebas0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I guess my questions are:
> Can I make 1 LVM Group Volume over several physical partitions and later
> adjust Logical Volume capacities as needed? <and> Will this give me better
> chances to survive a potential hard drive catastrophe?
>
> > You can have only 4 primary partitions. One and only one of the four
> > primary partitions can be an extended partition.
>
> OK thanks so Maybe then I need to
> (1) NTFS
> (2) Boot
> (3) Home
> (4) /, /tmp, Swap
>
> with "/", "/tmp" and Swap being logical partitions in the extended partition
> BUT all logical partitions in (3) and (4) part of the same LVM Group Volume
> so I can adjust capacities of "/", "/home" "/tmp" and "Swap" individually.
> Would this work?
>
>
> > You could keep it in the free software family, and use gparted {live cd}
> > if you dont already have a linux installed.
>
> Yeah true, i have yet to try it, but, a bird in the hand is worth ...
> (At the moment I'm downloading Fedora 7 via FTP, a little slow, from the
> Argentine Patagonia. Bittorrent and Azure are painfully flow - not sure if
> it is my router firewall or "Speedy" ISP.)
>
>
> > > (1) \boot
> > > (2) logVol00 ("/home")
> > > (3) logVol01 ("/")
> > > (4) logVol02 (swap)
> > > (5) logVol03 ("/tmp")
> > >
> > > OR
> > >
> > > Should I FIRST create five PHYSICAL partitions with Partition Magic
> (both
> > > primary and extended) and then use LVM to end up with :
> > >
> > > (1) \boot
> > > (2) logVol00 (/home)
> > > (3) logVol01 (/)
> > > (4) logVol02 (swap)
> > > (5) logVol03 (/tmp)
> > >
> > > If i go with the 2nd option and leave extra free space in
> logVol00,logVol01
> > > and logVol03  can I later take space from "/home ",  /"tmp" or swap and
> > > redistribute it to "/" and vice-versa using LVM?
> > There is some catches to actually doing that - i'm dont know how to do
> > that without needing to back up your lvm item, delete, recreate, restore.
>
> Is this catch caused because the LVM group volume will be spread over more
> than one physical partition? Anyone know any good tips or tools (gui
> preferably) to deal with this?  Thinking of doing this because  if one of
> the physical partitions fail, prospects are slimmer that  any 1 partition
> dies, eg data in /home. Or is this assumption plain wrong?
>
> > > Maybe I can´t create 5 physical partitions and Partition Magics extended
> > > partition scheme is like LVM´s logical partition scheme and so the end
> > > result is similar or am I missing something here?
> >
> > Re LVM: IMHO it will make life more difficult if you have disk faults->
> > avoid it.
> > I am assuming you are space constrained: make /boot say 32MB. {I've
> > never had it using more than about 16MB, the updates system only keeps
> > two kernels in the boot partition these days}.
>
> Space is not a problem (so far), I have a 160 Gig byte (HD) 2 Gig RAM system
> Was going to go with: ~100 Meg for \boot
>                                 2 Gig swap
>                                 20 Gig for "/"
>                                 4 Gig for /tmp and a large chunk for /home
>
> > I wouldn't bother about a /tmp partition, instead distribute the space
> > between / and /home. This might make / susceptible to disk full
> > situations, but in my experience, this hasn't stopped the machine
> > working, just from being able to save ! {starting an X session as root
> > seems to need some space on / }. Also, some apps {firefox} download the
> > /tmp, then move a file when finished. Instead of this being a move
> > within a partition having a separate /tmp means it becomes a copy/delete
> > {and takes much longer}.
>
> Yes that is why I wanted LVM on top of physical partitions, because I can
> tweak \tmp space depending on its tested usage.
> > eg: usage of / on my PC - 5.7GB, but I am storing some data within that
> > size (because I ran out of space elsewhere), and I have 1206 rpm
> > packages installed. Another machine has / usage of 4.2GB. I quite often
> > make vmware virtual machines with 4GB virtual disk {32MB /boot, 512MB
> > swap, / as the rest. They generally have 2GB free after install. I add a
> > separate virtual disk if I need more space for /home}. If you tried to
> > do an install everything, you would need quite a huge / {/usr}, but I
> > don't have real stats about that.
>
> Interesting, maybe i am overdoing the space in "/"
> I guess I could always make it smaller with LVM

You don't need to use LVM. LVM rides on top of EXT3 and adds a level
of complexity many users do not need.

Back in the day (which was not too long ago) before LVM became the
favorite of the month, the default installation disk configuration for
mere mortals was swap, boot, and slash. Boot and slash were EXT2/EXT3
formatted. Swap was set for approximately 2X memory. Boot at 100 MB.
Slash was whatever you felt comfortable using, e.g. 8-10 GB. Since
everything is contained within slash there is no need to worry about
the size of any one partition. This is similar to your Windows
partitions and directories. All storage comes out of one pot. If you
run out of space you can create a new partition in free space or
another drive, create an entry in fstab, link/move files over and use
it place of an existing directory.