In the interest of not duplicating a pre-written document.
If you check out www.sistina.com, they have an excellent how-to on setting up LVM.
ONe caviat: They assume that it is not already in the kernel. In the case of RH 8.0, you can ignore this. It's already there.
In short, I've set up my box with LVM. I left /boot out. It CAN be included, but I prefer to take the simpler road. If it's 2:00am, and all hell has broken loose, I want to be able to at least boot the box...
But, the short side of it is:
You CAN build the LVM when you install the OS. Disk Druid is set up to do that. I personally don't like the logical volume naming conventions it uses, but it works, and you can always change the volume labels later.
Your disk (if viewd with fdisk later) will only show 2 partitions. 1 for the /boot, and the other for the rest of the disk.
Like so:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 16 128488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 17 4865 38949592+ 8e Linux LVM
The id 8e is the LVM.
All of your logical volumes, and subsequent filesystems are built on that. Mine looks like:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/datavg/rootlv 253871 139670 101094 59% /
/dev/hda1 124427 19935 98068 17% /boot
/dev/datavg/usrlv 2064208 1902492 56860 98% /usr
/dev/datavg/varlv 507748 64531 417003 14% /var
/dev/datavg/tmplv 126931 4663 115715 4% /tmp
/dev/datavg/optlv 2064208 56692 1902660 3% /opt
/dev/datavg/srclv 1032088 218444 761216 23% /usr/src
/dev/datavg/locallv 2064208 186368 1772984 10% /usr/local
/dev/datavg/homelv 4128448 128828 3789908 4% /home
none 256592 0 256592 0% /dev/shm
/dev/datavg/Datalv 25040764 190812 23577940 1% /Data
With /dev/datavg being the volume group, Datalv being the logical volume, and /Data being the filesystem.
The easiest way to get your head around it:
the Volume Group can be equated to the disk. But with LVM, you can group multiple disks into a single volume group. Thus making 4 18GB drives act like a single 72Gb drive.
The Logical Volumes, can be equated to the partitions. Except, with LVM, you don't need to reboot when you create, change, delete an lv.
The Filesystems are as they always have been.
It's really to big a subject to go into any more detail here. I'd suggest you check out sistina first. Then come on back, and we'll chat some more about this. I use LVM on many of my machines, and wouldn't be without it. This kind of disk management is exactly what Linux needs to compete on the enterprise scale.
Ric
Richardson, Robert wrote:
Hello,
I have a Dell PowerEdge 4400 with 104GB of disk space that I want to
configure as an FTP Server (vsftpd), with RH 8.0.
This system comes setup with hardware raid.
For future space expansion I want to configure the disks (/dev/sda) in LVM.
Questions:
1. Do you have to format the disks during the install phase using Disk Druid or Fdisk,
with their established filesystems, first?
2. If so can I then go back to fdisk, after the post install reboot, to modify the filesystems
into LVM volume groups? What is the sequence to accomplish that?
3. Are there any filesystems, such as /boot and / that do not get to LVMed?
4. Once installed are there any special procedures, script(s), that have to be invoked
every time an LVM configured system is rebooted?
Robert Richardson
Activision Studios
310.255.2247
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