Re: [gentoo-user] lvm2/external partitions question

["W.Kenworthy" <billk@iinet.net.au>]

My scheme is:
 100 M /boot on ext3 (I was going to store some other info there, but
its mostly "space" att)

 2G swap

 4G reiserfs with a complete, basic gentoo rescue install - if all goes
pear shaped, I have a backup including a functioning /boot on this
partition.  Particularly useful with things like a gateway: you can come
up on the rescue partition and provide near normal service/network
access while fixing the main problem in a chroot etc.  Maintenance of
this partition is done offline in a chroot so other than an occasional
test, its rarely run in its own right.

 4G / on reiserfs with /etc, /root etc

 remainder (200G is below, and on my main desktop system similarly
arranged I have 200G + an extra 60G drive) is all LVM
containing /home, /var, /tmp and /usr.

This system is mainly a LAMP server/gateway for a home network. it also
contains mostly file storage and backups in /home

moriah ~ # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5             3.8G  2.2G  1.6G  59% /
udev                  252M  2.6M  249M   2% /dev
cachedir              3.8G  2.2G  1.6G  59% /lib/splash/cache
/dev/vg1/usr           32G  5.9G   27G  19% /usr
/dev/vg1/var           48G  2.3G   46G   5% /var
/dev/vg1/tmp           16G   33M   16G   1% /tmp
/dev/vg1/opt          4.0G  169M  3.9G   5% /opt
/dev/vg1/home          77G   26G   52G  34% /home
none                  252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1              92M   18M   69M  21% /boot
/dev/hda3             3.8G  1.7G  2.1G  46% /mnt/hda3
moriah ~ #

There are probably performance issues, but they  are not noticeable in
practise.  hdparm actually shows a slight speed advantage for the LVM
partitions, but there are also error messages so I dont really trust it!

BillK


On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 17:50 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Hi,
>    My new A8N-E/AMD64 hardware came up the first time. SATA/DVD/CDRW
> all seen. LiveCD boots fine. memtest86 has been running for the last
> hour and looks good so far. All looks good so I'll start a Gentoo
> install pretty soon.
> 
>    I'm looking at LVN2 for this install. The main drive is 250GB. I'm
> wondering a couple of things:
> 
> 1) Should use all of the drive, other than the boot and swap
> partitions, for the main LVN partition and then let LVN subdivide it
> as needs come up as per the Gentoo-wiki on LVN2? This would meen, as I
> understand it, that there would never been more than real partitions
> on the drive.
> 
> 2) Possibly make the main install partition something like 50GB and
> use the balance of the hard drive outside of LVM2? If I do this and
> later add a new partition within LVM does that somehow change device
> numbering (/dev/sdaX) on the external partitions?
> 
>    I don't know why I would do the latter, other than should LVM
> become inoperable it seems that I could still get at the 200GB that
> isn't within LVM's control. Since the hardware is new I don't know
> anything about it's reliability yet and hate to go down a path where
> data gets trapped in a few weeks if something dies.
> 
> QUESTION: Are there any performance differences between using LVM and
> a standard partition?
> 
> QUESTION 2: does anythign about LVM2 beg for a 2005.1 LiveCD? Mine is 2005.0.
> 
>    Probably I'll do #1 and just live with it but if there's a better
> way to do it I'd like to hear what and why.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark
> 
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