On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 17:37 +0000, Andy Green wrote:
Michael A Peters wrote:
On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 15:50 +0000, Andy Green wrote:
Michael A Peters wrote:
LVM allows easy resizing of partitions, something you can not safely do with ext2 partitions without LVM. LVM avoids the need to completely back up and restore a drive because the average user was not psychic enough to know how things should be laid out to be space efficient 2 years post install.
LVM allows you to leave lots of unused space so that you can use it where you need it when you need it without having to fuss with mount points and figuring out how to make the mount points integrate most effectively into your file system.
This is true, but it's a curious thing: these cures are for diseases caused by fragmenting the storage space into fixed closed partition-subworlds in the first place. You can get the same joy in your life by just having a single fully sized / partition and none of this complex stuff piled upon constricting stuff delivering nothing going on.
Unfortunately there is no way to do a clean install while preserving some data if it is all one partition.
"No way?" I didn't try it, but booting to runlevel 1 and rm -rf /usr /boot before booting into the installation media for the "clean" install of FC(n+1) should get you to the same place.
If /usr/local is not a separate partition that is unmounted first, that would get you into some trouble. You probably would also want to wipe /etc and /var (though if you haven't moved apache, mysql, etc data to /srv first that may also get you into trouble with lost data)
Without having to chafe on pointless restrictions and a huge workaround software stack between you and your storage during the 9 months between needing to do that.
Are there any other reasons to have partitions and LVM on boxes with one storage device and no possibility for internal expansion?
I found in nice when installing TeXLive. Since TeXLive is self contained, I just created a new /texlive partition so I don't have to wipe it. I suppose though that such data would also be preserved if removing /usr /etc /var /lib /bin manually.
I would boot off a knoppix CD rather than boot into run level 1 to do it though if I was going to do that. For me, it's just easier to keep use separate logical volumes.
Another advantage of separate logical volumes / partitions - you can make a new partition to install the new OS into so you can boot into the old OS if you need to (IE when something critical is broken in new release). I do that on my desktop, but not my laptop. I don't install a new Fedora on my laptop until everything I need works on the Desktop.