Bonehead Move, LVM

[Andy Green]

Michael A Peters wrote:

>> "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)

Fair enough, although the issues with what to keep and what to destroy 
down /var or /etc are the same if they are on their own partition or all 
on /.  These are problems with trying to integrate a "clean install" 
concept into a living system rather than anything else.  With the right 
list on the rm -rf line it will emulate whatever the partitioning would 
have achieved.

>> 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

Well I didn't know TeX was that difficult to handle it basically needed 
its own OS ;-)

> 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.

When I have to use the one Windows app that still needs XP, I do it in 
Vmware, without partitioning my storage device for it.  If you want to 
install XP and Linux on the same drive without virtualization then I 
guess you have to make two partitions, but it doesn't make you fragment 
the linux one any further than / and swap.

-Andy