Linux logical volume manager - a few questions

[Neal Lippman]

I am looking at installing the lvm layer on my file server, which is
presently running woody. I have two 80GB hd's, one of which presently
stores my /home partition (exported via both nfs and samba to the other
systems on my home lan), and another which I just installed. (Actually,
there's a third 80GB which stores /, /boot, /usr, /tmp, and /var, but I
won't be including that in the lvm). Anyway, I figured the best approach
was to turn both 80GB data drives into one 160gb logical volume. Since
this is the main file store of everyone at home, stability is a very
very high priority.

My questions are:

1) Which lvm package to install? There are two obvious choices, lvm10
and lvm2. While lvm2 is the new rewrite, which is supposedly "stable",
it apparently lacks some features and according to the debian.org
description of the package is not yet ready for production use. So, I
assume I am correct in going for lvm10 at the present time?

2) If I do go with lvm10, will upgrading to lvm2 once it is ready for
production use just be a matter of apt-get install'ing lvm2 and removing
lvm10, or are there incompatibilities in the on-disk structure that
would mean starting over from scratch? That would be a major problem
once I have stuff scattered across 160GB of logical space on two
physical drives.

3) lvm10 recommends kernel version 2.4.20; I am running the standard
2.4.18 on the server. It is crucial to do this upgrade? (I suppose it
wouldn't hurt since 2.4.20 contains the driver for my server's onboard
gigabit ethernet chip, which I am not presently using as 2.4.18 did not
support it, but still, I like to do as little as possible to the
fileserver.)

4) Is anyone using lvm on their system who can comment on success,
failure, pitfalls, etc?

Thanks for any input.

nl




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[Corey Ralph]

Hi Neal,

On Sunday, August 3, 2003, at 12:50 PM, Neal Lippman wrote:

> 1) Which lvm package to install? There are two obvious choices, lvm10
> and lvm2. While lvm2 is the new rewrite, which is supposedly "stable",
> it apparently lacks some features and according to the debian.org
> description of the package is not yet ready for production use. So, I
> assume I am correct in going for lvm10 at the present time?

I use lvm10, I have no experience with lvm2 though. lvm10 is rock
solid, I have used it on disk arrays up to around 700G with no problems.

> 2) If I do go with lvm10, will upgrading to lvm2 once it is ready for
> production use just be a matter of apt-get install'ing lvm2 and
> removing
> lvm10, or are there incompatibilities in the on-disk structure that
> would mean starting over from scratch? That would be a major problem
> once I have stuff scattered across 160GB of logical space on two
> physical drives.

I don't know about this.

> 3) lvm10 recommends kernel version 2.4.20; I am running the standard
> 2.4.18 on the server. It is crucial to do this upgrade? (I suppose it
> wouldn't hurt since 2.4.20 contains the driver for my server's onboard
> gigabit ethernet chip, which I am not presently using as 2.4.18 did not
> support it, but still, I like to do as little as possible to the
> fileserver.)

I use lvm on both 2.4.18 and 2.4.19, it works fine.

> 4) Is anyone using lvm on their system who can comment on success,
> failure, pitfalls, etc?

I use it on some high traffic servers, it works great. It is very
useful in combination with reiserfs (apparently xfs also, I haven't
tried it) you can extend volumes on the fly. I suggest creating your
volumes fairly small and extending them as necessary, this allows you
the most flexibility. I would recommend against putting your root
partition on lvm though, it makes life difficult if you ever need to
boot off a rescue disk etc.

Cheers


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