Re: LVM root?

[Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 03:01:24AM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> You need an initrd or initramfs even if you compile a custom kernel.

Why would you bother building your own kernel for most machines?  Why
would you not use an initramfs?

> I like to boot into my / with init=/bin/sh, have an editor, netcat,
> the lvm tools and all that available to look around and fix things in
> case something does go wrong. With a standard initrd that is pretty
> much an impossibility and you need that for / on lvm.

If the initramfs is done right (initramfs-tools seems to do the job
well), then you should still be able to boot and get at your root
filesystem and do that.

> You can put swap on lvm. You should also think about suspend to disk,
> which needs enough swap to store all active memory. Twice your ram
> isn't a bad idea. Same as ram is pretty much a must.

Why would anyone without a laptop care?

> I always put tmp on tmpfs, which gets swapped out only when
> neccessary. I make swap a little bit bigger than I think I need and
> get double the value out of it as it can be used for tmpfs or swap as
> needed.

I agree with that.

> You might want to stripe the volume for editing accross both
> disks. Lvm can do that without you having to resrot to raid0. Gives
> you more speed on file I/O. It's a per volume thing so you can keep
> /usr, /var, /home on the first disk and just stripe the editing LV
> when you get the 2nd disk.

LVM can do that, but as soon as you start to add to the LVM later you
loose it.  In general it isn't recommended to use the stripping features
in LVM.

--
Len Sorensen