Re: LVM or FS:EXT3?

>  > I'm just about to install F7 onto one of my machines. I have
> FC6  
installed and happy on one of my boxes and Mandriva on another. I'm 
more used to managing FS:EXT3 or EXT2 partitions than FC6's LVM. If I 
set up the new box with FS:EXT3 at the partition stage will F7 have 
any problems? I have a 40Gb chunk of IDE and a 250Gb of SATA to play 
with.

>  I ignored LVM and went for the traditional EXT3 partitions with FC7. 
Didn't have any problems with that.  I've, previously, had plenty of 
problems with LVM, and I need to be able to *EASILY* put drives in and 
out of different boxes, in different combinations, so I don't like LVM.

I need a dual boot DOS and Linux box.  Before LVM, I just installed a 
Linux distro (Ubuntu or Fedora), then gparted the ext down to make 
room for FreeDOS.  Well, I tried that with Fe 7, and learned a lot 
(but not enough) about LVM.  Unless I missed something, it is very, 
very hard to downsize a physical partition associated with LVM.  I did 
a resize2fs to shrink the filesystem.  Then I did a lvreduce to reduce 
the logical volume, and I ended up with the planned 3G unallocated 
within the physical partition after that, but try as I might, I could 
not get the physical partition to shrink.  When I tried pvresize, even 
though I was supposed to have 3G unallocated within the physical 
partition, I kept getting an error and it refused to do the 
operation.  I found this "pvresize will refuse to shrink 
PhysicalVolume if it has allocated extents after where its new end 
would be", but as I said I supposed had unallocated extents.  Finally 
I just reinstalled Fe 7 with without LVM.

I had an unusual application, and I can see where LVM might be great 
if you want to grow a (logical) volume to span hard drives.  I can 
also see for the casual user who would never rezise his/her volumes, 
LVM is very transparent.  Good luck!