A Beginner's Guide To LVM

This guide shows how to work with LVM (Logical Volume Management) on Linux. It also describes how to use LVM together with RAID1 in an extra chapter. As LVM is a rather abstract topic, this article comes with a Debian Etch VMware image that you can download and start, and on that Debian Etch system you can run all the commands I execute here and compare your results with mine. Through this practical approach you should get used to LVM very fast.

However, I do not issue any guarantee that this tutorial will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

This tutorial was inspired by two articles I read:

These are great articles, but hard to understand if you've never worked with LVM before. That's why I have created this Debian Etch VMware image that you can download and run in VMware Server or VMware Player (see https://www.howtoforge.com/import_vmware_images to learn how to do that).

I installed all tools we need during the course of this guide on the Debian Etch system (by running

apt-get install lvm2 dmsetup mdadm reiserfsprogs xfsprogs

) so you don't need to worry about that.

The Debian Etch system's network is configured through DHCP, so you don't have to worry about conflicting IP addresses. The root password is howtoforge. You can also connect to that system with an SSH client like PuTTY. To find out the IP address of the Debian Etch system, run

ifconfig

The system has six SCSI hard disks, /dev/sda - /dev/sdf. /dev/sda is used for the Debian Etch system itself, while we will use /dev/sdb - /dev/sdf for LVM and RAID. /dev/sdb - /dev/sdf each have 80GB of disk space. In the beginning we will act as if each has only 25GB of disk space (thus using only 25GB on each of them), and in the course of the tutorial we will "replace" our 25GB hard disks with 80GB hard disks, thus demonstrating how you can replace small hard disks with bigger ones in LVM.

The article http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/04/27/managing-disk-space-with-lvm.html uses hard disks of 250GB and 800GB, but some commands such as pvmove take a long time with such hard disk sizes, that's why I decided to use hard disks of 25GB and 80GB (that's enough to understand how LVM works).

1.1 Summary

Download this Debian Etch VMware image (~310MB) and start it like this. Log in as root with the password howtoforge.

2 LVM Layout

Basically LVM looks like this:

You have one or more physical volumes (/dev/sdb1 - /dev/sde1 in our example), and on these physical volumes you create one or more volume groups (e.g. fileserver), and in each volume group you can create one or more logical volumes. If you use multiple physical volumes, each logical volume can be bigger than one of the underlying physical volumes (but of course the sum of the logical volumes cannot exceed the total space offered by the physical volumes).

It is a good practice to not allocate the full space to logical volumes, but leave some space unused. That way you can enlarge one or more logical volumes later on if you feel the need for it.

In this example we will create a volume group called fileserver, and we will also create the logical volumes /dev/fileserver/share, /dev/fileserver/backup, and /dev/fileserver/media (which will use only half of the space offered by our physical volumes for now - that way we can switch to RAID1 later on (also described in this tutorial)).

3 Our First LVM Setup

Let's find out about our hard disks:

fdisk -l

The output looks like this:

server1:~# fdisk -l
 
 Disk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sda1   *           1          18      144553+  83  Linux
 /dev/sda2              19        2450    19535040   83  Linux
 /dev/sda4            2451        2610     1285200   82  Linux swap / Solaris
 
 Disk /dev/sdb: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
 
 Disk /dev/sdc: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table
 
 Disk /dev/sdd: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sdd doesn't contain a valid partition table
 
 Disk /dev/sde: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sde doesn't contain a valid partition table
 
 Disk /dev/sdf: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sdf doesn't contain a valid partition table

There are no partitions yet on /dev/sdb - /dev/sdf. We will create the partitions /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1, and /dev/sde1 and leave /dev/sdf untouched for now. We act as if our hard disks had only 25GB of space instead of 80GB for now, therefore we assign 25GB to /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1, and /dev/sde1:

fdisk /dev/sdb

server1:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 10443.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): <-- m
Command action
   a   toggle a bootable flag
   b   edit bsd disklabel
   c   toggle the dos compatibility flag
   d   delete a partition
   l   list known partition types
   m   print this menu
   n   add a new partition
   o   create a new empty DOS partition table
   p   print the partition table
   q   quit without saving changes
   s   create a new empty Sun disklabel
   t   change a partition's system id
   u   change display/entry units
   v   verify the partition table
   w   write table to disk and exit
   x   extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): <-- n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
<-- p
Partition number (1-4): <-- 1
First cylinder (1-10443, default 1): <-- <ENTER>
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-10443, default 10443): <-- +25000M

Command (m for help): <-- t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): <-- L

0  Empty           1e  Hidden W95 FAT1 80  Old Minix       be  Solaris boot
1  FAT12           24  NEC DOS         81  Minix / old Lin bf  Solaris
2  XENIX root      39  Plan 9          82  Linux swap / So c1  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
3  XENIX usr       3c  PartitionMagic  83  Linux           c4  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
4  FAT16 <32M      40  Venix 80286     84  OS/2 hidden C:  c6  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
5  Extended        41  PPC PReP Boot   85  Linux extended  c7  Syrinx
6  FAT16           42  SFS             86  NTFS volume set da  Non-FS data
7  HPFS/NTFS       4d  QNX4.x          87  NTFS volume set db  CP/M / CTOS / .
8  AIX             4e  QNX4.x 2nd part 88  Linux plaintext de  Dell Utility
9  AIX bootable    4f  QNX4.x 3rd part 8e  Linux LVM       df  BootIt
a  OS/2 Boot Manag 50  OnTrack DM      93  Amoeba          e1  DOS access
b  W95 FAT32       51  OnTrack DM6 Aux 94  Amoeba BBT      e3  DOS R/O
c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52  CP/M            9f  BSD/OS          e4  SpeedStor
e  W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53  OnTrack DM6 Aux a0  IBM Thinkpad hi eb  BeOS fs
f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54  OnTrackDM6      a5  FreeBSD         ee  EFI GPT
10  OPUS            55  EZ-Drive        a6  OpenBSD         ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/
11  Hidden FAT12    56  Golden Bow      a7  NeXTSTEP        f0  Linux/PA-RISC b
12  Compaq diagnost 5c  Priam Edisk     a8  Darwin UFS      f1  SpeedStor
14  Hidden FAT16 <3 61  SpeedStor       a9  NetBSD          f4  SpeedStor
16  Hidden FAT16    63  GNU HURD or Sys ab  Darwin boot     f2  DOS secondary
17  Hidden HPFS/NTF 64  Novell Netware  b7  BSDI fs         fd  Linux raid auto
18  AST SmartSleep  65  Novell Netware  b8  BSDI swap       fe  LANstep
1b  Hidden W95 FAT3 70  DiskSecure Mult bb  Boot Wizard hid ff  BBT
1c  Hidden W95 FAT3 75  PC/IX
Hex code (type L to list codes): <-- 8e
Changed system type of partition 1 to 8e (Linux LVM)

Command (m for help): <-- w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Now we do the same for the hard disks /dev/sdc - /dev/sde:

fdisk /dev/sdc
 fdisk /dev/sdd
 fdisk /dev/sde

Then run

fdisk -l

again. The output should look like this:

server1:~# fdisk -l
 
 Disk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sda1   *           1          18      144553+  83  Linux
 /dev/sda2              19        2450    19535040   83  Linux
 /dev/sda4            2451        2610     1285200   82  Linux swap / Solaris
 
 Disk /dev/sdb: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sdb1               1        3040    24418768+  8e  Linux LVM
 
 Disk /dev/sdc: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sdc1               1        3040    24418768+  8e  Linux LVM
 
 Disk /dev/sdd: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sdd1               1        3040    24418768+  8e  Linux LVM
 
 Disk /dev/sde: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sde1               1        3040    24418768+  8e  Linux LVM
 
 Disk /dev/sdf: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
 Disk /dev/sdf doesn't contain a valid partition table

Now we prepare our new partitions for LVM:

pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1

server1:~# pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
   Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sdc1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sdd1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sde1" successfully created

Let's revert this last action for training purposes:

pvremove /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1

server1:~# pvremove /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
   Labels on physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully wiped
   Labels on physical volume "/dev/sdc1" successfully wiped
   Labels on physical volume "/dev/sdd1" successfully wiped
   Labels on physical volume "/dev/sde1" successfully wiped

Then run

pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1

again:

server1:~# pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
   Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sdc1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sdd1" successfully created
   Physical volume "/dev/sde1" successfully created

Now run

pvdisplay

to learn about the current state of your physical volumes:

server1:~# pvdisplay
   --- NEW Physical volume ---
   PV Name               /dev/sdb1
   VG Name
   PV Size               23.29 GB
   Allocatable           NO
   PE Size (KByte)       0
   Total PE              0
   Free PE               0
   Allocated PE          0
   PV UUID               G8lu2L-Hij1-NVde-sOKc-OoVI-fadg-Jd1vyU
 
   --- NEW Physical volume ---
   PV Name               /dev/sdc1
   VG Name
   PV Size               23.29 GB
   Allocatable           NO
   PE Size (KByte)       0
   Total PE              0
   Free PE               0
   Allocated PE          0
   PV UUID               40GJyh-IbsI-pzhn-TDRq-PQ3l-3ut0-AVSE4B
 
   --- NEW Physical volume ---
   PV Name               /dev/sdd1
   VG Name
   PV Size               23.29 GB
   Allocatable           NO
   PE Size (KByte)       0
   Total PE              0
   Free PE               0
   Allocated PE          0
   PV UUID               4mU63D-4s26-uL00-r0pO-Q0hP-mvQR-2YJN5B
 
   --- NEW Physical volume ---
   PV Name               /dev/sde1
   VG Name
   PV Size               23.29 GB
   Allocatable           NO
   PE Size (KByte)       0
   Total PE              0
   Free PE               0
   Allocated PE          0
   PV UUID               3upcZc-4eS2-h4r4-iBKK-gZJv-AYt3-EKdRK6

view as pdf | print

Share this page:

Sub pages

48 Comment(s)

Add comment

Comments

By:

First of all i'll shall congratulate you for the great guide.

I'll rather call it a "Introduction Guide" than a "Beginner Guide" , never than less it's very usefull.

Instead of having LVM on top ou those 2 RAID-1 devices and considering the disks capacity, you can use 4 disk RAID-5 system thus have more 25% usable space.

This will make the process more complex but you will be rewarded with more 80GB ;)

This must be done after you replace the first 2 Harddrives.

Initilize only one disk, let's say /dev/sdc

pvcreate /dev/sdc

Add the 80GB disk to the volume

vgextend fileserver /dev/sdc

pvmove all all volumes from the md[01] devices to the 80GB disk

pvmove /dev/md0 /dev/md1

note: this is very slow better use -v for periodic update

Remove all other devices from the volume

vgreduce fileshare /dev/md0 /dev/md1

Reboot and replace the disks
Initialize the new disks for raid

fdisk /dev/sdb
fdisk /dev/sdd
fdisk /dev/sde

create the raid-5 with one missing device

mdadm --create /dev/md0 -a -l 5 -n 4 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 missing

Add the new md0 device to the Volume

pvcreate /dev/md0 && vgextend fileserver /dev/md0

Move the data from the 80GB disk

pvmove /dev/sdc

(wait)
Remove the 80GB disk from the volume group

vgreduce fileshare /dev/sdc

Initialize the disk for RAID

fdisk /dev/sdc and change the type to fd (Linux raid autodetect)

Add the disk to the RAID md0

mdadm --manage /dev/md0 -add /dev/sdc1

Wait for full sync

cat /proc/mdstat

And you are now with a 240GB RAID-5 volume

df -h

A 4 disk RAID-5 is not as performant as the RAID-1 but that's the trade off .

José Borges Ferreira

By: lingeswaran

Step by Step Tutorial available in UnixArena.

http://www.unixarena.com/2013/08/how-to-install-lvm-on-linux-and-disk.html

http://www.unixarena.com/2013/08/linux-lvm-volume-group-operations.html

http://www.unixarena.com/2013/08/linux-lvm-volume-creation-operation.html

By:

Be aware that when you initialize a device into a Volume or into a md RAID some unique IDs are assign and written into the first sector of that device. When you do some testing on some virtual enviorment such as VMWare you may ran into this problem. So as a part of the initilization process you better do a

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/diskname bs=1k count=1
#blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdc

before everything else.

José Borges Ferreira

By:

Source /dev/sda, destination /dev/sdb

sfdisk -d /dev/sda|sfdisk /dev/sdb

By:

I'm very sorry if I overlooked a note or a posting on this, but how do I set the CLI keyboard layout to qwerty (us 101/104) on Debian Etch.

I immediately ran into problems, it seems your vmware image was made using a german keyboard layout (?)

Thanx!

By: admin

Run

apt-get install console-data console-tools debconf
dpkg-reconfigure console-data

or connect ot the virtual machine with an SSH client such as PuTTY. In PuTTY you use your client machine's keymap.

By: tonyg

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for this resource. I've been referring back to this article for the past 2 years now, it's saved my butt, and my data, a few times now. Thanks!!!

By: Sun_Blood

Just one word. GREAT!

This was a perfect start for me to learn on hot to use LVM. Now I'll setup my new NAS =)

By: Anonymous

Out of the 6 drives on the image - drives 3 and 4 appear to be corrupt on my VM VirtualBox Manager.

By: Mark

What a great introduction to LVM! Thank you so much for taking the trouble to put all this together.

By: Ramesh

Thank you very much for the Excellent article. I appreciate your effort.

By: Anonymous

Thank you for this guide. I just ran into lvm at work and this is extremely helpful.

I am trying out the vm you provided for practice. Login info in howtoforge is incorrect.

the user is: root
password : howtoforge

By: Anonymous

I wanted to say thank you for the great and useful guide. On the internet we should find articles like this. Well done!!!

By: pointer2null

I've just had a quick read of the tutorial and will run through it soon.

One thing I do notice is you give very clear instructions on how to execute each stage, but no explanation of why it is being done( and to a smaller degree, or what is accomplished in each step).

Still, it's a valuable resource. :)

By: Anonymous

Try to use EasyRSH in Google Play - it's quick reference guide for Solaris, HPUX, Redhat OSs

By: albert gharbi

Thank a lots. very excellent.that was very usefull and practical.

By: Rich

Excellent tuorial. There seems to be so little 'easy' documentation out there for managing disks and LVs in Linux. This tutorial is perfect for those that want to get started and understand the process rather than copy/paste snippets from other forums. Great job!

By: John Snow

Thank you very much, as a newer admin to the unix world I was struggling with this concept, but this made it extremely clear.

By: zensan

Creating one Volume Group over 4 physical devices is SOOO WROONG! Admin who do this on server without RAID Array for those physical devices should've been thrown into abyss where as an punishment would be fixing byte by byte such volumes for eternity.

However this tutorial is useful example for creating LVM, the basic concept in chapter 2 should have been removed in favor of concept from chapter 7 (or simply put warning there "do not do this except for training!"). I bet most of newbie admins creating layout from chapter 2 will not change this later (until will be too late and massive data loss happened).

By: KBR

Very helpful. Thanks

By: Keith

The command sequence

mv /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_orig

cat /dev/null > /etc/fstab

vi /etc/fstab

can be shortened to

cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_orig

vi /etc/fstab

Doing so also has the benefit that you only need to append the /etc/fstab with

/dev/fileserver/share /var/share ext3 rw,noatime 0 0

/dev/fileserver/backup /var/backup xfs rw,noatime 0 0

/dev/fileserver/media /var/media reiserfs rw,noatime 0 0

By: Keith

Both lvreduce and lvextend have the -r, --resizefs option [Resize underlying filesystem together with the logical volume using fsadm(8)].

lvextend -L50G /dev/fileserver/share

e2fsck -f /dev/fileserver/share

resize2fs /dev/fileserver/share

can be shortened with the just:

lvextend -r -L50G /dev/fileserver/share

By: Nathan

Thank you so much for this tutorial. I have spent the last 3 days pulling my hair out trying to get lvm to work properly and learn it in general. I followed probably 20 howto's and posted in 3 forums before I found this guide. This was written EXACTLY the way I learn best. doing it repetitively and systematically. I wish I would have found this sooner. I was beyond frustrated. Thank you again!

By: ThaSwede

Thank you Falko for a great guide that helped me after 3 days of complete and utter frustration wrapping my head around this simple set of tasks. I just wasnt getting it until I found this guide. Now Im a LVM ninja lol not really but I was able to setup my dev system using your instructions after almost giving up from previous howto's. Your style of instruction apparently works for me specifically. Appreciate the time and effort you put into it!

~Nathan~

By: john

Her Im sorry that Windows are the winner bye miles. Follow many guides but all end with only root can write to a LVM-disk. I cant be root in GU and dont share.

By: Ad

Great guide, thank you :)

By: Martin

Thanks, this was one hell of a tutorial. I just have one question: is there any downside to having multiple RAIDs using the same devices? Any performance penalty or space waste? It's probably OK for two but what if I had more, like 10 or 20?

By: Karthik

Well explained and very easy to understand.

By: Hans Linkels

Thanks for this great tutorial. I have tried most steps on a LVM created for this purpose.

Showing how to change things and then how to reverse those changes is excellent. The reader understands what can be reversed and what not.

Also the step by step explanation in the correct sequence is very easy to follow. It is much better than just a description what what can be done.

By: Prad

Excellent tutorial, thank you !!

By: sudhams reddy

It helped a lot in troubleshooting and as well as o learn the basic to high level of LVM partiontion... Keep doing that!!!!

By: apr

thank you

By: Apona K.

Very nice guide! But it lacks any mentioning of encryption. Encryption should be everywhere by default by now... What about LUKS / dm-crypt? :)

By: David

Great howto!

One recipee I would like to add (because it took me a while figuring this out myself) is how to enlarge your volumes after increasing the size of a virtual additional disk in VMWare (.e.g. in a use case where this disk is used for data and the data is growing). In the situation below the physical volume is on the first partition of the disk labeled as sdb, so adapt for your specific situation:

- Backup your data- Increase size of disk in VMWare- Restart your VM - unmount the volume on the changed disk if necessary- sudo parted /dev/sdb resizepart 1 100%- sudo pvresize /dev/sdb1- sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/fileserver/share- sudo e2fsck -f /dev/fileserver/share- sudo resize2fs /dev/fileserver/share- remount /dev/fileserver/share - check increased size with df -h

Have fun,

David

By: Ertugrul Dur

You are literally the best man! I truly appreciate the work! No one or no other book has clarified and solidified the LVM concept better than you. I am in the process of buying a new server and want to set up RAID with LVM and will definitely use your guide for assistance. Incredible Work! I would really love for you to continue writing tutorials on other subjects in such clarity and detail! Thank you so much! If you had a book, I would be your first customer!

By: jeff knapp

The etch download doesn't work

By: Gurusamy

Thank you very much for this though tutorial. Helped alot!

By: James Coleman

Useful guide on shrinking logical volume. Thanks!

Just a note on english verb shrink - it is irregular - so past tense is "We shrank" or "We have shrunk".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shrink#Verb

By: Hans Linkels

Thank you for this article. It should serve as an example for many others. 95% of all articles, blogs and HowTo's present a simple step-by-step guide about how to get to a solution. Most of them are even copies of other ones, containing exactly the same information.

What most of those articles lack is an explanation of how and why, and most important, how to recover from a mistake or an error. If everything goes well, you don't need that many documentation anyway.

By describing in this article how LVM is built-up step by step (not a step-by-step guide!), tearing down steps and than rebuilding them this gives a perfect insight about what can be done in every step of LVM building.

I have this article as eternal bookmark in my browser and I use it over and over again.

By: linuxito

how to know the equivalen 40gb = 10485760

By: Peter

I have very important question, since no one has asked that: do all the partitions have to be completely empty? Or let me rephrase that: can do everything written in the article not worrying about what on the physical volumes? I'm just a little bit worried wouldn't I kill my system and destroy all the files by messing them as you described.

By: Vince

Excellent documentation, not even needing this right now but was an enjoyable and followable read.

By: Flesz

image download link is broken

By: Ron van Dijk

Thank you and I like the style. Except explenation how also some exercisies. Good stuff

By: Rob Basham

When I make the directory as you say it seems to just go under root. See the squence below:

[[email protected] /]# mkdir /c_data /c_hints /c_commit[[email protected] /]# mount /dev/vg_c_data/lv_c_data /c_data[[email protected] /]# mount /dev/vg_c_hints/lv_c_hints /c_hints[[email protected] /]# mount /dev/vg_c_commit/lv_c_commmit /c_commitmount: special device /dev/vg_c_commit/lv_c_commmit does not exist[[email protected] /]# mount /dev/vg_c_commit/lv_c_commit /c_commit[[email protected] /]# df -hFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on/dev/sda3 919G 2.7G 916G 1% /devtmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /devtmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /dev/shmtmpfs 32G 11M 32G 1% /runtmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup/dev/sda1 250M 157M 93M 63% /boottmpfs 6.3G 0 6.3G 0% /run/user/0[[email protected] /]# mkdir /cassandra/datamkdir: cannot create directory ‘/cassandra/data’: No such file or directory[[email protected] /]# lsbin c_commit c_hints dev disk2 disk4 disk6 home lib64 mnt proc run srv tmp varboot c_data c_log disk1 disk3 disk5 etc lib media opt root sbin sys usr

By: tommylovell

It's a Very well written article, and very useful. LVM is a fabulous piece of technology. Too bad it is not embraced by more people (Debian and Raspbian in particular). But it is Logical Volume Manager in Linux, not Logical Volume Management. (Logical volume management is a concept implemented in many operating systems; Logical Volume Manager is the logical volume management implementation in Linux - originally written by Heinz Mauelshagen of Sistina, subsequently purchased by Red Hat and made available under a GPLv2 license. Thank you, Red Hat.) I don't know how old this article is, but I'd encourage people to use LVM in any non-embedded system. I am trying to come to speed (again) with snapshots, and with thin provisioning. Great features.

By: Michael Cooper

Hello Falko,

Excellent 9 page article my friend, I was struggling with LVM and the understanding of it but now i understand it perfectly. Great job my friend.

Thanks,

Michael

By: Sacheen

Superb article

Log in or Sign up

A Beginner's Guide To LVM

On this page

1 Preliminary Note

1.1 Summary

2 LVM Layout

3 Our First LVM Setup

Sub pages

Suggested articles

48 Comment(s)

Comments