[opensuse-factory] Using LVM by default for new installations?
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Hash: SHA1
Hi,
I noticed that Fedora seems to have switched to using Logical Volumes
for installing on the hard disk since FC4. I personally am using LVM
myself for a very long time and must say I am very fond of it. It
provides much more flexibility than using plain partitions, especially
when it comes to resizing or moving file systems or taking backups.
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme
for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an
enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
Bye,
LenZ
- --
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenz Grimmer
Lenz Grimmer wrote:
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
if you can garanty that one hard drive failure won't make me lose all my data, I'ok (I have several HD, of course, each with part of my system) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, jdd wrote:
if you can garanty that one hard drive failure won't make me lose all my data, I'ok (I have several HD, of course, each with part of my system)
In what respect would that be different from a hard disk failure with
regular partitions? Are you implying that using LVM increases the risk
of data loss? Please elaborate.
Bye,
LenZ
- --
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenz Grimmer
Lenz Grimmer wrote:
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Hi,
jdd wrote:
if you can garanty that one hard drive failure won't make me lose all my data, I'ok (I have several HD, of course, each with part of my system)
In what respect would that be different from a hard disk failure with regular partitions? Are you implying that using LVM increases the risk of data loss? Please elaborate.
AFAIK, if LVM uses 4 disks and one of them fails, the hole file system is lost. With the usual system only the file system on the faulty disk is lost. jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
jdd wrote: ...
AFAIK, if LVM uses 4 disks and one of them fails, the hole file system is lost. With the usual system only the file system on the faulty disk is lost.
That's quite oversimplified, but it's more or less correct, as with
RAID 0 (striping).
On the other hand, you get the disk space of the combined physical
disks, and you can dynamically create and resize logical volumes (=
partitions for your filesystems), given that you're also using a
filesystem on top of those that you can resize dynamically (reiserfs
or XFS can do that even while partitions are mounted).
I've been running quite often into users asking for help because they
don't have enough disk space left, but they have that other or new
disk... can't that be used.. etc... (and yes, I'm a long-time LVM user ;))
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote:
jdd wrote: ...
AFAIK, if LVM uses 4 disks and one of them fails, the hole file system is lost. With the usual system only the file system on the faulty disk is lost.
That's quite oversimplified, but it's more or less correct, as with RAID 0 (striping).
On the other hand, you get the disk space of the combined physical disks, and you can dynamically create and resize logical volumes (= partitions for your filesystems), given that you're also using a filesystem on top of those that you can resize dynamically (reiserfs or XFS can do that even while partitions are mounted).
I've been running quite often into users asking for help because they don't have enough disk space left, but they have that other or new disk... can't that be used.. etc... (and yes, I'm a long-time LVM user ;))
cheers
given modern disks are large, is it possible to have LVM strictly assigned at one disk, or separate LVM to each disk? sharing a partition between several disks don't seems so nice to me (when not strictly necessary), but when a drive fails, anyway all it's content is lost so... we could have to good and not the bad? jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
jdd wrote:
given modern disks are large, is it possible to have LVM strictly assigned at one disk, or separate LVM to each disk?
Of course.
sharing a partition between several disks don't seems so nice to me (when not strictly necessary), but when a drive fails, anyway all it's content is lost so... we could have to good and not the bad?
Yes. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 17:45, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
jdd wrote:
given modern disks are large, is it possible to have LVM strictly assigned at one disk, or separate LVM to each disk?
Of course.
Actually you can have LVM per partition, right? [...] Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
Ulrich Windl wrote:
On 1 Jun 2006 at 17:45, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
jdd wrote:
given modern disks are large, is it possible to have LVM strictly assigned at one disk, or separate LVM to each disk?
Of course.
Actually you can have LVM per partition, right?
can you expand that? I don't understand. do you mean that one can make partitions on a drive then set lvm to be used only on this partition? if so, it's very good. I always have seen LVM advertised as a mean to have one partition spanning several disks jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, jdd wrote:
can you expand that? I don't understand.
do you mean that one can make partitions on a drive then set lvm to be used only on this partition?
Yes, sure. On my Laptop, I have one big partition, labelled as "LVM". Inside of this partition, LVM manages the volumes, which contain all my different file systems (various root file systems, swap, usr/local and my encrypted home file system). I can add/remove and resize these at will, within the boundaries of that partition. If I needed more space for these volumes, I could even assign another partition on the same disk to it (e.g. by removing my windows partition and adding it to the physical volume, or by adding another hard disk. Then the volumes could span across both disks.
if so, it's very good.
Yes, it's very sweet!
I always have seen LVM advertised as a mean to have one partition spanning several disks
That is possible, but not a requirement. I'd like to recommend you to
take a look at the LVM HOWTO, it explains the capabilities of LVM quite
nicely:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
Bye,
LenZ
- --
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenz Grimmer
On 2 Jun 2006 at 12:47, jdd wrote:
Ulrich Windl wrote:
On 1 Jun 2006 at 17:45, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
jdd wrote:
given modern disks are large, is it possible to have LVM strictly assigned at one disk, or separate LVM to each disk?
Of course.
Actually you can have LVM per partition, right?
can you expand that? I don't understand.
AFAIK, LVM ist just a data structure on a block device. So /dev/hda1 is such a device just as /dev/hda is.
do you mean that one can make partitions on a drive then set lvm to be used only on this partition?
This or these partitions. Yes.
if so, it's very good.
I always have seen LVM advertised as a mean to have one partition spanning several disks
Yes you can, you can make more insane things as well however. I have LVM on top of MD on top of partitions (EVMS): Everything mirrored plus almost everything in LVM. Regards, Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 16:53, jdd wrote:
sharing a partition between several disks don't seems so nice to me (when not strictly necessary), but when a drive fails, anyway all it's content is lost so... we could have to good and not the bad?
Our last database server had 46 disks connected to twelve SCSI HBAs. You really do not want to have 26 mirrored filesystems. Believe me. Regards, Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
Ulrich Windl wrote:
On 1 Jun 2006 at 16:53, jdd wrote:
sharing a partition between several disks don't seems so nice to me (when not strictly necessary), but when a drive fails, anyway all it's content is lost so... we could have to good and not the bad?
Our last database server had 46 disks connected to twelve SCSI HBAs. You really do not want to have 26 mirrored filesystems. Believe me.
rte-read my post (you quoted it) I beleive you have raid also, no? do you think this is standard install :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 16:18, jdd wrote:
Lenz Grimmer wrote:
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Hi,
jdd wrote:
if you can garanty that one hard drive failure won't make me lose all my data, I'ok (I have several HD, of course, each with part of my system)
In what respect would that be different from a hard disk failure with regular partitions? Are you implying that using LVM increases the risk of data loss? Please elaborate.
AFAIK, if LVM uses 4 disks and one of them fails, the hole file system is lost. With the usual system only the file system on the faulty disk is lost.
If you have one filesystem spanning 4 disks, then yes. Otherwise: no. Maybe it's even partially available. Regards, Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 03:08:02PM +0200, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
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Hi,
I noticed that Fedora seems to have switched to using Logical Volumes for installing on the hard disk since FC4. I personally am using LVM myself for a very long time and must say I am very fond of it. It provides much more flexibility than using plain partitions, especially when it comes to resizing or moving file systems or taking backups.
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
i too like LVM and LVM/RAID. considering the size of the disks being provided in any given new system i think it makes a lot of sense to pursue the idea of LVM as default. -- michael --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
Hi, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
I noticed that Fedora seems to have switched to using Logical Volumes for installing on the hard disk since FC4. I personally am using LVM myself for a very long time and must say I am very fond of it. It provides much more flexibility than using plain partitions, especially when it comes to resizing or moving file systems or taking backups.
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
Only if you combine it with mount-by-{label,uuid}. That would certainly help people who are stuck after rearranging their hard disks. While we are on the topic of booting: How about an additional initrd which has all storage drivers included, not only the ones you are using on your system? Currently there is no way to boot an installation after changing the harddisk controller (except recovery from CD which is unknown to most). So if the system can't find its root file system, it can emit a message "please reboot and select 'boot recovery mode'". The "boot recovery" initrd would have the same contents as the normal initrd, but with all storage drivers and added auto-probing. Thoughts? Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 16:34, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
Hi, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
I noticed that Fedora seems to have switched to using Logical Volumes for installing on the hard disk since FC4. I personally am using LVM myself for a very long time and must say I am very fond of it. It provides much more flexibility than using plain partitions, especially when it comes to resizing or moving file systems or taking backups.
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
Only if you combine it with mount-by-{label,uuid}. That would certainly help people who are stuck after rearranging their hard disks.
While we are on the topic of booting: How about an additional initrd which has all storage drivers included, not only the ones you are using on your system? Currently there is no way to boot an installation after changing the harddisk controller (except recovery from CD which is unknown to most). So if the system can't find its root file system, it can emit a message "please reboot and select 'boot recovery mode'". The "boot recovery" initrd would have the same contents as the normal initrd, but with all storage drivers and added auto-probing.
I'd suggest a (working) yast repair module for that situation instead. (To be booted from different media, of course) Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 15:08, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
I noticed that Fedora seems to have switched to using Logical Volumes for installing on the hard disk since FC4. I personally am using LVM myself for a very long time and must say I am very fond of it. It provides much more flexibility than using plain partitions, especially when it comes to resizing or moving file systems or taking backups.
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
If it boots... ;-) Regards, Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
Ulrich Windl wrote:
On 1 Jun 2006 at 15:08, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
[...]Logical Volumes[...]
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
If it boots... ;-)
Works perfectly for me and my configuration is even more complicated: - GRUB on hda - /boot on hdb5 - / on LVM on hdb - mount-by-label for all filesystems - I can move hdb around as I want (hdc, hdd etc.) and only have to change one line in GRUB, no aother changes necessary. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On 1 Jun 2006 at 17:51, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
Ulrich Windl wrote:
On 1 Jun 2006 at 15:08, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
[...]Logical Volumes[...]
I'd like to propose that SUSE Linux considers switching to this scheme for new installations by default, too - I now filed this as an enhancement request in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=180762
What do others think about that?
If it boots... ;-)
Works perfectly for me and my configuration is even more complicated: - GRUB on hda - /boot on hdb5 - / on LVM on hdb - mount-by-label for all filesystems - I can move hdb around as I want (hdc, hdd etc.) and only have to change one line in GRUB, no aother changes necessary.
My 10.0 also boots from LVM as well, but not with my own compiled kernel (before LVM I had no problems). That would bring up the point of documenting the boot magic that's going on (and the secret options available for the "init" shell script in initrd). I guess there's some problem in initrd, but that's painful to debug by trial (boot) and error (reset). Regards, Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 05:51:03PM +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
Works perfectly for me and my configuration is even more complicated: - GRUB on hda - /boot on hdb5 - / on LVM on hdb - mount-by-label for all filesystems - I can move hdb around as I want (hdc, hdd etc.) and only have to change one line in GRUB, no aother changes necessary.
Is there a reason that /boot is on a seperate partition? I do not know LVM, so I can only guess that the reason is that LVM is not directly bootable. As we had a LONG discussion where it was decided to have /home on a seperate discussion, this would lead to the following solution if we should decide to go with LVM 1 reiser partition /boot to make it bootable 1 LVM partition / 1 LVM partition /home To explain: the seperate /home is not so much about size as it is about keeping your data and settings with a new installation. If there is no real reason to have a seperate /boot, then it would still make sence to have a seperate / and /home as we have now. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, houghi wrote:
Is there a reason that /boot is on a seperate partition? I do not know LVM, so I can only guess that the reason is that LVM is not directly bootable.
Accessing LVM requires a kernel that can read the LVM info stored on the disk. A plain BIOS can't do that, and I am not sure about a boot manager like GRUB. The kernel loads the LVM drivers via the initrd, which is located on a "plain" /boot partition in my case. Once the initrd is booted, it can read and access all other file systems located inside the LVM.
As we had a LONG discussion where it was decided to have /home on a seperate discussion, this would lead to the following solution if we should decide to go with LVM 1 reiser partition /boot to make it bootable
Why ReiserFS for /boot? This file system rarely changes and the journal would just require additional disk space. Plain ext2 is sufficient.
1 LVM partition / 1 LVM partition /home
Correct, this is in essence how I handle it here. Nitpick: it's called a "LV (logical volume)", not "partition" in LVM terms. See the LVM HOWTO for a detailed explanation of the terminology used there. Just to avoid confusion :) So yes, the partitioner would need to create two additional regular partitions: - a small one (~100MB is more than sufficient) for /boot - a large one to house the logical volumes for /home and the root file system This can be either a primary or an extended partition, of course. To give a concrete example - this is how my laptop disk (80GB) is partitioned: /dev/hda1 (~20GB) - Windows XP (NTFS) /dev/hda2 (~150MB) - Linux /boot (ext2) /dev/hda3 (~1.5GB) - Linux swap (as the current suspend to disk kernel code requires swap to be outside the LVM - swsusp2 has fixed that and can suspend to swap managed by the device mapper) /dev/hda4 (~58GB) - Linux LVM /boot is actually shared between 10.1 and 10.0 - as both use different file names for the kernel and initrd files, there is no conflict. If only YaST2 would take care of existing entries in GRUB's menu.lst - I currently have to manually re-add some entries after a fresh installation. Inside the LVM I currently have defined the following volumes: suse101root (7GB) - SuSE Linux 10.1 root file system (ReiserFS) suse10root (7GB) - SUSE Linux 10.0 root file system (ReiserFS) cryptohome (10GB) - Encrypted /home file system (ReiserFS) usrlocal (2GB) - /usr/local (ReiserFS) Once I have finished my transition from SUSE 10.0 to 10.1, I can simply discard the suse10root volume and re-use the disk space e.g. for a SUSE 10.2 test root filesystem, creating a short-term "scratch" file system or for increasing any of the other volumes, in case they run out of space. No repartitioning required!
To explain: the seperate /home is not so much about size as it is about keeping your data and settings with a new installation.
Exactly, this works very well and should of course be kept. LVM would just make this even more flexible, as you can resize /home dynamically without repartitioning (in case your MP3 collection grows ;) )
If there is no real reason to have a seperate /boot, then it would still make sence to have a seperate / and /home as we have now.
Definitely. LVM won't get into the way of this scheme of separating file
systems. Quite the contrary, it would allow some additional flexibility!
Bye,
LenZ
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- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenz Grimmer
On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 03:55:59PM +0200, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
Accessing LVM requires a kernel that can read the LVM info stored on the disk. A plain BIOS can't do that, and I am not sure about a boot manager like GRUB. The kernel loads the LVM drivers via the initrd, which is located on a "plain" /boot partition in my case. Once the initrd is booted, it can read and access all other file systems located inside the LVM.
OK, clear.
1 reiser partition /boot to make it bootable
Why ReiserFS for /boot? This file system rarely changes and the journal would just require additional disk space. Plain ext2 is sufficient.
I just looked at what is now there and to make it clear that it was not LVM. Could be anything, I guess. FAT32? :-) I do not believe that at this moment it is relevant in the discussion what it will become later.
1 LVM partition / 1 LVM partition /home
Correct, this is in essence how I handle it here. Nitpick: it's called a "LV (logical volume)", not "partition" in LVM terms. See the LVM HOWTO for a detailed explanation of the terminology used there. Just to avoid confusion :)
OK. I understand. To avaid confusion, we use different names for someting that fr the layman like me is the same. ;-)
/boot is actually shared between 10.1 and 10.0 - as both use different file names for the kernel and initrd files, there is no conflict. If only YaST2 would take care of existing entries in GRUB's menu.lst - I currently have to manually re-add some entries after a fresh installation.
With a fresh installation, you have the option to mix the old and the proposed GRUB menu.lst. The following is from memory, so names might be a bit different and you will need to look for yourself. Where you can select the way things are partitioned and the software to install choose the secon tab, Advanced. There you can select how to boot. If you select GRUB, you have a button in the lower right, "Other", where you can do a "Merge" with what you have now. The names come out a bit awkward, but you should be able to keep your current settings AND your new ones in one go from boot on.
If there is no real reason to have a seperate /boot, then it would still make sence to have a seperate / and /home as we have now.
Definitely. LVM won't get into the way of this scheme of separating file systems. Quite the contrary, it would allow some additional flexibility!
I see very much the advantages. It would solve also issues where you first had only /home and / as volumes (partitions makes more sence still, but whatever) on the LVM and then suddenly realize that you want to keep /srv with a new installation. You could then resize / and /home, add /a new volume /srv and move all the data over from / to /srv. Do the new installation and still have what you wanted to keep. Am I correct in this idea? If so, then by all means. Pitty it was not clear when it was decided to go to / and /home, Would have een great to do at the same time and would have stopped the part where people said to also have a seperate /opt, /srv, /var, /boot, /whatever. Unless somebody can think of a huge drawback, I am convinced now. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, houghi wrote:
I just looked at what is now there and to make it clear that it was not LVM. Could be anything, I guess. FAT32? :-)
Almost - FAT32 might be a bit too low-end for that. But it's pretty common to use ext2 for /boot - you don't really need more and using a journalled file system like ext3/ReiserFS/XFS/JFS would just eat up disk space. There is not much to journal as the content of /boot won't change very frequently. And if you keep /boot at a reasonable small size, an fsck should not take that long anyway.
I do not believe that at this moment it is relevant in the discussion what it will become later.
Right, this is the trivial part ;)
OK. I understand. To avaid confusion, we use different names for someting that fr the layman like me is the same. ;-)
Right, in the both are just containers for a file system.
With a fresh installation, you have the option to mix the old and the proposed GRUB menu.lst. The following is from memory, so names might be a bit different and you will need to look for yourself. Where you can select the way things are partitioned and the software to install choose the secon tab, Advanced. There you can select how to boot. If you select GRUB, you have a button in the lower right, "Other", where you can do a "Merge" with what you have now. The names come out a bit awkward, but you should be able to keep your current settings AND your new ones in one go from boot on.
Right, now I remember there used to be something like that. I will have to take a closer look next time I perform a fresh install.
I see very much the advantages. It would solve also issues where you first had only /home and / as volumes (partitions makes more sence still, but whatever) on the LVM and then suddenly realize that you want to keep /srv with a new installation. You could then resize / and /home, add /a new volume /srv and move all the data over from / to /srv.
Exactly!
Do the new installation and still have what you wanted to keep. Am I correct in this idea?
Yes, that's how it works. LVM scans the disk for existing volumes and the YaST2 LVM frontend lists these similar to already existing partitions. You can assign these to new mount points without formatting.
If so, then by all means. Pitty it was not clear when it was decided to go to / and /home, Would have een great to do at the same time and would have stopped the part where people said to also have a seperate /opt, /srv, /var, /boot, /whatever.
It really depends what purpose the system is used for. For a server, this might make sense. For a desktop workstation, I think a separation between the root file system and /home should be sufficient.
Unless somebody can think of a huge drawback, I am convinced now.
Thanks ;)
Bye,
LenZ
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- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenz Grimmer
On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 06:05:41PM +0200, Lenz Grimmer wrote:
Do the new installation and still have what you wanted to keep. Am I correct in this idea?
Yes, that's how it works. LVM scans the disk for existing volumes and the YaST2 LVM frontend lists these similar to already existing partitions. You can assign these to new mount points without formatting.
One last question. So the only risk is that if one disk breaks, all your data is gone.
If so, then by all means. Pitty it was not clear when it was decided to go to / and /home, Would have een great to do at the same time and would have stopped the part where people said to also have a seperate /opt, /srv, /var, /boot, /whatever.
It really depends what purpose the system is used for. For a server, this might make sense. For a desktop workstation, I think a separation between the root file system and /home should be sufficient.
Many people will have something like /music or /Pr0n that they share with otheres and thus not place it in /home To me it is not completely clear where in fhs you should place user data that you share with others. If Alice, Ben and Carl want to listen to music each of them has, where should you place that? `man hier` tells me that /usr should be read only. So you can't add music without root permission. /home is for the users and I do not want others snooping in my directory. I see nothing that is specificaly to share data. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
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Op vrijdag 2 juni 2006 19:06, schreef houghi:
Yes, that's how it works. LVM scans the disk for existing volumes and the YaST2 LVM frontend lists these similar to already existing partitions. You can assign these to new mount points without formatting.
One last question. So the only risk is that if one disk breaks, all your data is gone.
The LVM will most likely be on 1 disk (for home systems). The the early days disk were small and than LVM was used to obtain bigger file systems. Nowadays disks are big enough and LVM is used for convenience to be able to resize partition. 1 disadvantage by introducing LVM is another layer that can break. I use LVM as well, and when I have to do something with it, I always have to look up the commands as I never remember these....
If so, then by all means. Pitty it was not clear when it was decided to go to / and /home, Would have een great to do at the same time and would have stopped the part where people said to also have a seperate /opt, /srv, /var, /boot, /whatever.
It really depends what purpose the system is used for. For a server, this might make sense. For a desktop workstation, I think a separation between the root file system and /home should be sufficient.
Many people will have something like /music or /Pr0n that they share with otheres and thus not place it in /home To me it is not completely clear where in fhs you should place user data that you share with others. If Alice, Ben and Carl want to listen to music each of them has, where should you place that? `man hier` tells me that /usr should be read only. So you can't add music without root permission. /home is for the users and I do not want others snooping in my directory. I see nothing that is specificaly to share data.
Well call it /home/share, /home/4allgoodpeople, /home/4all, etc -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 09:55:41PM +0200, Richard Bos wrote:
The LVM will most likely be on 1 disk (for home systems). The the early days disk were small and than LVM was used to obtain bigger file systems. Nowadays disks are big enough and LVM is used for convenience to be able to resize partition. 1 disadvantage by introducing LVM is another layer that can break. I use LVM as well, and when I have to do something with it, I always have to look up the commands as I never remember these....
I have 4 HD's at this moment and place for 2 more. 1 will always be seperate (hda) for tests, the others I would like to have as a LVM, but I want to know the risks beforehand. I do not see the use of an LVM per HD. Say I have 1 HD that is /home. What would I gain if I use LVM only on that drive. I have no interest in making it smaller and I can't make it bigger.
Many people will have something like /music or /Pr0n that they share with otheres and thus not place it in /home To me it is not completely clear where in fhs you should place user data that you share with others. If Alice, Ben and Carl want to listen to music each of them has, where should you place that? `man hier` tells me that /usr should be read only. So you can't add music without root permission. /home is for the users and I do not want others snooping in my directory. I see nothing that is specificaly to share data.
Well call it /home/share, /home/4allgoodpeople, /home/4all, etc
I am aware that you can place it anywhere. If there is no fixed place, you will get in trouble. Many places use the first letter and the last name of a person as a login. And suddenly there is 'Simon Hare' starting for you. I also understand that you then need to give him another login. I am very much aware that you can palce it anywhere you like. I would just think that it would be solved from within fhs. A fixed place to put shared data that you are able to edit (if you have the proper rights). As Linux is a multiuser system, I doubt that I am the first person who ever thought of that. It just seems logical to have a standard for it, even if it is in /home. All the rest is having a standard. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
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Hi, On Fri, 2 Jun 2006, houghi wrote:
On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 09:55:41PM +0200, Richard Bos wrote:
I have 4 HD's at this moment and place for 2 more. 1 will always be seperate (hda) for tests, the others I would like to have as a LVM, but I want to know the risks beforehand. I do not see the use of an LVM per HD. Say I have 1 HD that is /home. What would I gain if I use LVM only on that drive. I have no interest in making it smaller and I can't make it bigger.
You can move /home "on the fly" (while in-use!) to a bigger disk (or spread over a bunch of disks). Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
Hi Lenz,
So yes, the partitioner would need to create two additional regular partitions:
- a small one (~100MB is more than sufficient) for /boot
Arrg, I was very happy to have seen that gone for good. SUSE doesn't even boot any more on boxes with a BIOS too old to need separate /boot. That'll be the reason why Red Cr oops never got rid of it.
/dev/hda1 (~20GB) - Windows XP (NTFS) /dev/hda2 (~150MB) - Linux /boot (ext2) /dev/hda3 (~1.5GB) - Linux swap (as the current suspend to disk kernel code requires swap to be outside the LVM - swsusp2 has fixed that and can suspend to swap managed by the device mapper) /dev/hda4 (~58GB) - Linux LVM
Inside the LVM I currently have defined the following volumes:
That all looks very sensible. I don't see a big problem with repartitioning non-LVM disks myself (shrink, lower partition boundary, create/resize filesystem above new boundary), but with LVM it would be a tad easier and somewhat safer. After too many disasters I always use raid1 though for / and /home, perhaps others, but not for /data, because the play area and collection of ISOs doesn't need it. Although there are voices to the contrary, I've had good experience with Linux soft raid. How stable is, in your opinion, the soft raid1 (or raid5) combined with LVM when something fails somewhere? Thanks, Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
Hi Lenz, ... That all looks very sensible. I don't see a big problem with repartitioning non-LVM disks myself (shrink, lower partition boundary, create/resize filesystem above new boundary), but with LVM it would be a tad easier and somewhat safer.
Indeed.
After too many disasters I always use raid1 though for / and /home, perhaps others, but not for /data, because the play area and collection of ISOs doesn't need it. Although there are voices to the contrary, I've had good experience with Linux soft raid.
Me too, I have everything in (software) RAID1. mdadm has been really solid for me so far.
How stable is, in your opinion, the soft raid1 (or raid5) combined with LVM when something fails somewhere?
Rock-solid for me. There are just a couple of annoying bugs in YaST2's
partitioner we should get rid of before pushing those options to a wider
public (e.g. as the default setup/proposal).
I don't recall 100%, but from what I remember: when you want to combine
RAID1 and LVM, in YaST2, you first have to create the RAID1 (obviously).
Then, don't assign it (/dev/md0) anywhere ! It is assigned by default
AFAICR, so you have to explicitly remove the assignments. Then go to LVM
and there are a few glitches with selecting RAID1 as a PV for LVM too..
I think... sorry, can't explain it in detail, I just had to jump through
a few hoops and don't remember it.
There's also a *very* annoying bug with YaST2, when you resize
partitions, YaST2 will never allow you to do so on a mounted filesystem,
although it works perfectly well on the CLI - at least with LVM +
reiserfs or XFS (lvresize && resize_reiserfs).
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Op zaterdag 3 juni 2006 01:48, schreef Pascal Bleser:
I don't recall 100%, but from what I remember: when you want to combine RAID1 and LVM, in YaST2, you first have to create the RAID1 (obviously). Then, don't assign it (/dev/md0) anywhere ! It is assigned by default AFAICR, so you have to explicitly remove the assignments. Then go to LVM and there are a few glitches with selecting RAID1 as a PV for LVM too.. I think... sorry, can't explain it in detail, I just had to jump through a few hoops and don't remember it.
Yep, see: http://susewiki.org/index.php?title=Raid_and_LVM Are there bug reportts? -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Richard Bos wrote:
Op zaterdag 3 juni 2006 01:48, schreef Pascal Bleser:
I don't recall 100%, but from what I remember: when you want to combine RAID1 and LVM, in YaST2, you first have to create the RAID1 (obviously). Then, don't assign it (/dev/md0) anywhere ! It is assigned by default AFAICR, so you have to explicitly remove the assignments. Then go to LVM and there are a few glitches with selecting RAID1 as a PV for LVM too.. I think... sorry, can't explain it in detail, I just had to jump through a few hoops and don't remember it.
Right, good URL :)
Are there bug reports?
Those problems are faced by anyone using software RAID and LVM on SUSE
Linux, so.. probably.
On the other hand, they have been in YaST2 for quite some time now, and
they've never been fixed, so... probably not ;)
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=113883
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=105728
It's definitely not fixed on 10.0, but I didn't check 10.1.
(yes, I know, I should have filed bugs instead of moaning ;))
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
houghi wrote:
1 reiser partition /boot to make it bootable
reiser * have a minimal journal size of 50Mb, so not that good for a so small partition * is _not_ known by all the rescue cd available anywhere (nor by SUSE floppies, in fact). so plain ext2 is definitively the best choice. It's also a good idea to keep a separate /boot partition, just in case some old hardaware with faulty BIOS (may be there are still some around) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory-help@opensuse.org
On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 08:14:44PM +0200, jdd wrote:
so plain ext2 is definitively the best choice.
As said, that is trivial at this point what it is.
It's also a good idea to keep a separate /boot partition, just in case some old hardaware with faulty BIOS (may be there are still some around)
If you have old hardware with a faulty BIOS, you can alweays edit it. I don't want it on my new hardware with a working Bios if I can avoid it. The only reason that it is needed is that you can not boot it with /boot being on LVM, otherwise please as little partiotioning as possible. We have had this discussion before with the seperation of /home and /. Please don't start it all over again. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
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participants (10)
-
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Eberhard Moenkeberg -
houghi -
jdd -
Lenz Grimmer -
Michael Galloway -
Pascal Bleser -
Richard Bos -
Ulrich Windl -
Volker Kuhlmann