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

Mon Feb 21 21:48:56 CET 2011

On Monday, 21 February 2011 14:19:23 Michael Scherer wrote:
+> Le lundi 21 février 2011 à 10:56 +0100, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
+> > Another part of the discussion may be the fact that a large number of
+> > users are running dual (or multiple) boot systems, keeping the
+> > pre-installed Windows and adding Linux. Others will have Windows and
+> > Mandriva, adding Mageia.
+> > 
+> > While LVM may be nice if you are running one OS on one harddisk, it
+> > may be not so easy when running 3 OS on one harddisk. Or different
+> > installations of the same Linux (like stable version and cauldron).
+
+IMHO, it is *easier* to run multiple distributions on one machine with LVM, as 
+you don't have the problem of having to statically pre-assign partitions to 
+different distributions, and then have to image one filesystem to enlarge the 
+filesystem before it, shrink the one after it, and put it back ...
+
+The only complication is where to put bootloaders, multiple distros sharing 
+/boot is not great, so I just make a few small boot partitions before my PVs.
+
+> I do run lvm on Fedora and mac os x without any trouble. Windows
+
+out-the-box
+
+> will
+> not support any linux file system more than lvm,
+
+There are third-party drivers/software for accessing ext2/ext3 partitions 
+under Windows, even LUKS+ext2/ext3. But, on LVM, I don't think there are any 
+options.
+
+> and the same goes for
+> os x.
+
+I thought Mac OS X had ext2/ext3 read support?
+
+> For a linux system, a lvm logical volume is just another disk.
+
+That's a bit of an over-simplification. Hot-plugged LVM systems (I have a 
+2*2TB external disk enclosure, running in "SAFE50" mode, AKA half RAID0, half 
+RAID1, RAID1 is a PV in a separate VG) don't auto-mount like hot-plugged non-
+LVM disks, rescue still have problems activating VGs until recently (may still 
+be present), kernel upgrades may still mess up root= parameter on LVM etc. 
+etc.
+
+I have been using LVM with online resizing in diskdrake since about Mandrake 
+8.2 (with XFS), and I think for users without non-Linux installations, it 
+should be made more prominent or the default ... but only when all the 
+remaining issues are addressed.
+
+Regards,
+Buchan
+