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

Thu Feb 24 14:19:54 CET 2011

Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+> Now with LVM, what do I do?
+>   
+Pretty much exactly the same, if that's what you want.  LVM is just a
+layer of indirection that you place on top of *only* those partitions
+you want LVM to control.  It lets you create multiple "virtual"
+partitions each of which includes one or more physical partitions.  In
+the minimal case, you can partition exactly as you would without LVM,
+but make each of the Mageia partitions an LV formatted as ext4 (or
+whatever) rather than a physical ext4.
+
+The difference is that later on if you need to expand one of these 1-1
+LVM partitions, all you do is create another physical partition
+*somewhere* - either on that physical disk or another you add - and tell
+LVM to make that new physical partition part of the LV you want to
+expand.  The original physical partition on which you based the LVM
+stays exactly where it is without change, and the Logical Volume just
+magically increases in size by the size of the new physical partition
+you added.
+
+Using LVM for some or all of Mageia has no effect on your ability to use
+standard partitioning for other partitions on these disks.
+