LVM & retroactively creating encrypted /home partition

Paul Johnson pauljohn32 at gmail.com
Fri May 9 21:49:13 UTC 2008


Since I had a bad experience with LVM in F6, I've always ignored it
and created partitions the "old fashioned" way.

However, some people  here do the default install of Fedora and it
uses LVM and in some cases people FORGET that they want their /home on
a separate partition.  So the installer creates a single gigantic
logical volume in which everything is mounted.

See:

lvm> lvs -v
    Finding all logical volumes
  LV       VG         #Seg Attr   LSize   Maj Min KMaj KMin Origin
Snap%  Move Copy%  Log LV UUID
  LogVol00 VolGroup00    1 -wi-ao 295.91G  -1  -1 253  0
                   BSOijT-X3UT-CwpS-Ncdo-7hX8-vfiU-iXzuiA
  LogVol01 VolGroup00    1 -wi-ao   1.94G  -1  -1 253  1
                   EG5Jgg-7VaB-megf-63k2-7n15-sCfn-YH6eNs

Before upgrading from Fedora 8 to 9, I want to separate the /home
partition from the rest of this.  But I'm a little unsure of the best
approach because I anticipate trying the encrypted partition in Fedora
9.  I would rather not just completely reformat the hard disk.  I'd
like to set the /home stuff aside on its own place, and then let the
installer erase F8 and do a new install.

I should run lvm and  shrink LogVol00 down with lvresize like this:

lvm> lvresize -L 100G

I should not run

lvm> lvcreate VolGroup00 -L 195.91G

I should wait for F9 to do that.  Correct?  I wait because encryption
cannot be put on retroactively a logical volume.

Suppose I do an upgrade to F9. That would not destroy LogVol00.
Suppose further I'm able to use the custom partition tool to have it
use my empty space for the /home.

The part that has me a bit confused is how I'll get the data off the
old /home directory in LogVol00 onto the encrypted /home that will
exist in LogVol02.  I mean, if F9 creates a new /home in the empty
space, and it mounts that under /home (still thinking of it like an
ordinary partition, I guess), does that block access to /home on
LogVol00 ?

Is this understandable?

pj


-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas




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