Lvm and gparted

Question

a few months ago i installed arch linux on my computer. i use reiserfs as a filesystem and i have lvm on it (or is this backwards, i don't know ). i really don't know why i used lvm at installation, but at that time it seemed to me as a great tool to manage different "partitions" (logical volumes) on one partition. now i am thinking to cut a little space from my windows partition and give it to linux. So i have a few (well lots of ) questions.
My specs first:
# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 118.5 GB, 118526284800 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14410 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 1913 1925 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1926 14410 100285762+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1926 4475 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 4476 4606 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 4607 14410 78750598+ 8e Linux LVM
# di -h
Filesystem Mount Size Used Avail %Used fs Type
/dev/mapper/VolGro / 10.0G 4.6G 5.4G 46% reiserfs #VolGroup00-lvol0
/dev/sda2 /boot 101.9M 59.5M 42.4M 58% reiserfs
/dev/mapper/VolGro /home 65.1G 46.6G 18.5G 72% reiserfs #VolGroup00-lvol1
/dev/sda5 /mnt/win 19.5G 12.1G 7.5G 62% fuseblk
And questions:
1. can i resize partitions using gparted without damaging data on them? does this include partitions with lvm on them?
2. can i resize logical volumes on lvm without damaging data on them too? is snapshot used at doing this and how?
3. is there any benefit of using lvm if i can resize partitions without damaging data on them?
4. does changing logical volumes require a restart?
5. why does gparted show that on /dev/sda7 there is only 34 MB of used space?
6. is it ok to have two partitions marked as boot?
thank you for your answers.
Last edited by billy (2007-02-24 17:25:19)

Answer 1

Originally Posted by cmosentine
I am building out a replacement server which will be the target for a server migration. The server will host an NSS volume. In the past I have always created an array-level logical drive for my NSS partiton/volume. Rather than doing this, I would rather just have one logical drive and partition the space using LVM (except for /boot and swap). Once I create the LVM and add /, /home, /var, /tmp to it, I will have a lot of extra space which I want to use for the NSS volume.
So, is it possible to use the unused space in LVM for NSS? Or should I stick which a separate logical partition for NSS?
Chris
With OES11 it's possible and quite easy to use the left free space on the system disk for NSS.
It also does not have the potential for havoc as was the case with OES2 (as with OES2 this was also possible, it just meant using EVMS on the system disk device, which could lead to issues booting after patching of updating due to needed missing kernel modules for EVMS within initrd).
Still, even with it being possible and supported to do so, if you can house the OS bits and data (be it on NSS and other filesystems) on different disk devices.. that would always be what I'd opt for. It makes certain maintenance/recovery and update tasks easier/more flexible/reliable as OS and data partitions are not within one and the same "container".
Cheers,
Willem