[Mageia-dev] time to switch from raw partitions to lvm?

Thu Feb 24 13:28:59 CET 2011

On 24 February 2011 06:06, andre999 <andr55 at laposte.net> wrote:
+>> It's not as easy as LVM (need to use a partitionner).
+>> Diskdrake and the like will force you to umount the partitions to resize
+>> which may needs to boot on a rescue CD (eg for resizing / fs)
+>> It may not be possible ie:
+>
+> A rescue CD like Sysrescuecd is easy to use and comes with all the tools
+> needed.
+> It would be nice if the rescue option of the eventual release Mageia dvds
+> contained the few utilities necessary for this.
+
+that's not the point: you still have to reboot in order to resize some
+fs whereas,
+at least you have to umount them with graphical tools.
+whereas with lvm you can resize fs online, without umounting anything, without
+rebooting;.
+
+>> - you already have 4 primary partitions and none of them is an extended
+>> one.
+>
+> A gpt partition table solves this problem.
+
+which nearly nobody use, hence it's irrelevant.
+The 99.99% of users who are using partitions are still stuck with the problem.
+
+>> - If you've a small 8Go partition at start of the disk followed by one
+>> To partition
+>>   and you want to increase the first one, you're screwed without LVM
+>>   With LVM, you can just got some free space from anywhere (even another
+>> disk)
+>
+> You can do that with symbolic links if you don't want to resize the
+> partitions.
+
+quick & dirty workaround. hardly a real solution...
+and if you have one directory that is too big to move in any of the
+available partition,
+you are still stuck, whereas with lvm you can shrunk every fs and the
+all all of the small
+space just freed into the fs that needs it
+
+>> - one can live resize (w/o umouting/remounting)
+>>
+>> - one can use snapshots in order to rollback dangerous update
+>>   (eg: for trying initscript ->  systemd switch, ...)
+>>
+>> I think it brings many usefull features.
+>> Those who don't want LVM could still do manual partitionning.
+>
+> These seem to be mostly enterprise-oriented factors, unless I'm missing
+> something.
+> For now at least, I prefer manual partitionning to be the default.
+
+easy rollbacking after a disastrous update to a new xserver, a new
+boot system, ...
+is appealing for cooker users.
+
+live resizing for freeing space in order to set up a vm on top of block device
+(yes you can still use a file loopback but this is cleaner)
+
+being able to live resizing fs in order to move free space where it's
+needed before
+eg: doing a big backup, copying those 3 dvds of the mariage the wife wants to be
+saved, ... without rebooting is appealing to anyone
+