Re: LVM partition full (was:what is /command directory?)
On Sun, Aug 26, 2007 at 05:38:27PM +0100, Richard Lyons wrote:
> > I don't see anything here to panic over. If you want to give yourself
> > some more room in /, you could put /tmp on tmpfs as long as you have
> > enough swap already. Then you could delete the LV tmp and reallocate
> > its space to /. Also, your /boot is too big but that's more difficult
> > to change; not impossible.
>
> I've just read the lvm howto and other stuff on 'Changing the Size of
> the LVM-Partitions' -- and I don't like the sound of it a bit. Lots
> of talk of "if something goes wrong", and very complicated. I think
> I'll go back to the old way as soon as I have energy to do the moving.
> There is room on my second hard drive to copy the whole system off,
> repartition the first drive, and copy it back. With boot on a non-LVM
> partition, I assume it will all reboot quite happily afterwards. (Mental
> note: I must remember to remove everything lvm from /etc/rc*.d. before
> rebooting)
>
Here there be dragons. Remember that your initrd will be set up to
start your LVM system so that it can find the root device for the
kernel. Since I've never had to tweak an initramfs it could get
interesting. So with / on LVM, lvm will be started before init even
gets a chance to run anything in /etc/rc*.d.
As for LVM being complicated and warnings of "if something goes wrong",
remember that you are dealing with your data on disk. A HOWTO for any
regular partitioner would also be full of warnings. Be sober and well
rested before you touch your partitions of whatever stripe (so to
speak). The other thing to remember is that things are layered. You
have files in filesystems on logical partitions in volume groups made up
of one or more physical volumes. The concept can be complicated but the
design of those concepts is well tested in real-life use on many OSs.
Linux implimentation of those concepts is somewhat newer but it does
work.
However, I do agree that from the user/admin's perspective it is
complicated. It offers many advantages to compensate for that. The
most obvious is that you do have at your fingertips the ability to tweak
the sizes of your partitions which you would not have with normal
partitions.
Your choice. Good luck.
Doug.
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