Booting - Enterprise Volume Management System

[Alexander Skwar]

Toby Kelsey <toby_kelsey at ntlworld.com>:

> David Abrahams wrote:
>> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/benefitsoflvmsmall.html
> 
> Interesting.  Looking at the HOWTO, it seems that LVM combines the main 
> disadvantage of separate partitions - having to manually unmount and resize when 
> you run out of space

unmount? Have you actually read the howto?

There's no need to unmount the filesystem to make the fs larger - and,
as far as LVM is concerned, making smaller would also not require an
unmount. Sadly, there are no filesystems out there, which support 
shrinking online filesystems, as far as I know.

> - with the main disadvantage of one big partition -  
> allowing fs corruption and installers to affect user and system data together. 

What are you talking about?

> The main advantage appears being able to resize logical volumes and filesystems 
> easily, but for jfs "this is extremely error prone"

How so? mount -o remount,resize /your/jfs

> and even for ext2/3 "there  
> is currently no e2fsadm equivalent for LVM 2

True, but ext3 can be made larger online, AFAIK. I don't use ext3, though.

> and the e2fsadm that ships with LVM  
> 1 does not work with LVM 2" so it all seems a bit too unstable to trust to 
> novices.

No, it doesn't seems so.

> Since you cannot shrink xfs and jfs the main functionality becomes  
> useless for many advanced users.

Wrong. Mostly, filesystems will grow. It's, in my experience, quite
rare, that filesystems need to be made smaller.

> While it may be useful for servers, with confidence-building statements like "it 
> seems that the online resizing patch is rather dangerous" I would suggest it is 
> not yet suitable for a home or laptop system.

Wrong. On what experience do you base your conclusion? On your false reading?

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson