Bonehead Move, LVM

[Chris Jones]

> 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.

I disagree. I think there are good reasons to have multiple linux 
partitions.

On my laptop I have one XP partition (lets ignore this). One /boot 
partition of 100M, two partitions of 10G and the rest (about 30G as /home)

Currently I have FC6 installed on one of the 10G partitions, using the 
/boot and /home partitions. The other 10G partition is mounted as /data 
and use for temp storage of this and that.

when a new FC comes along, say FC7, I will clear out /data, backup the 
current content of /boot and then do a clean install on that partition. 
During the install tjhe partition that FC6 mounts as /data is used as / 
(and the FC6 /parition mounted as say /fc6) .

After this, assuming the FC7 installed worked I can boot into my new 
clean FC7. I then, by hand add back to /boot the entries needed to boot 
to my old FC6 system.

After doing this I effectively have a triple boot system, winXP, FC6 and 
FC7.

Once I am happy FC7 is OK, I can delete FC6 and reuse that partition.

In you scheme, with one linux partition you cannoty do a clean FC7 
install without first deleting FC6. What if FC7 does work in some way ? 
In my scheme I still have FC6 which I can go back to, whilst the 
problems with FC7 are fixed. With yours you do not.

I don't presently use LVM, mainly because it was not around when I first 
started using this system (FC1 or so). However, now I probably would as 
it would allow me to resize the partitions easily (for instance if I 
found 10G was not enough for /) something I cannot do at the moment with 
the standard partitions.

Chris