[linux-lvm] Reducing the size of a physical volume

["Charles Lacour" <Clacour@greyhound.com>]

Is it possible to reduce the size of a physical volume?

I have a 20-GB partition set up as LVM, and an instance of
Gentoo inside it, all of which works fine.

I wanted to check out Mandrake 9.2, so I set up a "mandrake"
logical volume, but Mandrake doesn't seem to support LVM
(at least not installing to it - it did recognize what the partition
was, and even how full it was, but didn't give me any way to
select an individual logical volume within it.)

I rebooted back into Gentoo, figuring to reduce the size of the
LVM partition by several gigabytes, and I can't find a way to do
it. (I suppose if I got really, really brave I could delete the
partition with fdisk and add it back starting at the same point,
but ending sooner, but I'm _not_ that brave (or foolish, depending).

If the answer is "No, you can't", any recommendations on how to
allocate things so that I don't get burned by this again?

Only thought I've had is several smaller partitions, each of which is
a PV to LVM. You couldn't let go of a precise amount of space
(especially since number-of-partition limits mean your partitions may
have to be a few GB each), but it would be better than the position
I _think_ I'm in now, which is "screwed to the wall".

I'm not subscribed to the list, so please CC any replies to:

clacour (at-sign) greyhound.com

Thanks in advance,

Charles Lacour