Need help with LVM -

Chris Murphy lists at colorremedies.com
Sat Dec 21 20:44:09 UTC 2013


On Dec 21, 2013, at 1:05 PM, "Bob Goodwin - Zuni, Virginia, USA" <bobgoodwin at wildblue.net> wrote:

> 
> On 12/21/2013 02:51 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> Based on the /dev/sdb layout it seems you used custom/manual partitioning in the installer, and created all of these mount points manually, is that correct? If so why not use Guided partitioning with either partition scheme set to LVM or Standard Partitioning? It seems you'd have ended up with what you wanted:
> I may have foolishly checked somewhere that offered to keep /home.

I don't see any evidence of an existing home on /dev/sdb. And it's also not mounted in your df report. Can you report the output from the command lvs? Did you want to preserve the existing /home on /dev/sda perhaps?

Manual Partitioning does allow you to find a previous installation's /home, and you can choose to keep it by setting it as a mount point at /home. And then deleting everything else. But that would have gotten you what you wanted. Yet you're reporting you don't have the layout you want. So there definitely was a miscommunication between user and installer.

It's actually quite a valid point, that the Guided path doesn't have a mechanism at all to preserve an existing /home. And yet a separate /home partition (or LV) is the default installation layout for Fedora. Considering all of the mind boggling esoteric things it can do, I think this is much more basic, to help users preserve /home. All it needs to do is merely add it to /etc/fstab, and if encrypted to crypttab also. Not rocket science, yet a big benefit.

I think an admitted weakness of the new installer interface is that it doesn't take existing installations into account as much as assuming new installations.

> 
> When I get around to "fixing" this mess I will eliminate LVM, it's an added layer of complexity that buys me nothing. Ok when it works but ... Fixing means a re-install.

Or really esoteric knowledge. At a minimum you need to made sdb4 a PV, and then add the PV to the existing VG, and then either create a new LV or resize an existing /home LV if it exists. And then create or resize an ext4 volume, which itself is a multistep process. And then possibly modify fstab to account for the new LV /home if it doesn't exist, and further figure out how to copy any data from a rootfs /home to the new LV /home.


Chris Murphy



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