Can the automounting of LVM volumes be dangerous in any way?

[Roger Heflin]

Antonio Olivares wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I have a question regarding the automounting of LVM volumes
 > like it is the default Fedora installation.  Is there any
 > way that it is harmful when done from a linux live cd?
> 
> For instance in Slax, Tomas Matejicek, the creator of
 > slax has been encouraged by me and others to implement it
 > in Slax.  I believe it is an excellent idea.  I was
 > wondering if there are any downnsides to having
 > this done in this livecd or any livecd for that matter.
> 
> Thank you in advance for your input regarding this matter.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Antonio 


Only if the machine in question is on a SAN (disks are shared between multiple 
machines) and you automount LVM's/filesystems that are being actively used by 
another machine.      And in recovery situations people do use livecd's to 
troubleshoot issues on things like this.    Though I have previously 
informed/documented that any time a reinstall is on a SAN connected machine to 
disconnect the SAN just so accidents are less likely to happen.   Often the SAN
disks can be seen by all machines on the SAN and the boot up software controls 
which machine mounts and takes care of it.

This is generally very very bad and can result in files being lost and 
filesystem corruption, I have seen System admin mount SAN disks on more than one 
machine and it is very messy.

If you want to setup a way for the livecd to have a writeable filesystem you 
might limit it to a specific set of names such as LVM's starting with LIVECD_
or something similar, and then mount them at locations depending on what is 
after the _ so LIVECD_home or livecd_home would mount as /home and livecd_data 
would mount as /data, you could even do something like this livecd_usr_local 
would mount as /usr/local.   If there is a limit on the lvm name length change 
livecd to lcd.   Using a name like that should much decrease the possibility of 
accessing something someone else is using.


                              Roger