[linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[ardy]

Is there any other X front ends for LVM maintenance other than the one on
freshmeat.net?

As an aside, I emailed the maintainer of lvm-viewer, he hasn't updated the
code since last year, and told me he had no time for further development.
It'd be a shame to have that code go stale, I don't code so I couldn't
offer to take it over.


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Re: [linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[José Luis Domingo López]

On Friday, 09 March 2001, at 19:30:48 -0500,
ardy@rdb.linux-help.org wrote:

> Is there any other X front ends for LVM maintenance other than the one on
> freshmeat.net?
> 
> As an aside, I emailed the maintainer of lvm-viewer, he hasn't updated the
> code since last year, and told me he had no time for further development.
> It'd be a shame to have that code go stale, I don't code so I couldn't
> offer to take it over.
> 
This is a recurring idea that comes to my mind very often: having a
reasonably good user interface on top on lvm tools would be nice. But this
should be a must, of course.

Moreover, last Friday I saw the graphical user interface that Veritas
Volume Managar ships on Enterprise and higher-priced SCO Unixware
licences. The UI seemed (IMHO) hardly useful, and taking into account that
volume mangement is not precisely that kind of thing newbies tend to do,
command line utilities are the best choice for now.

I also considered making a GUI frontend, but programming is not my best
skill, and available time is not on excess. Maybe this kind of frontends
is what distro-makers should do, ease the learning curve for newbies. The
community provides the functionality, and distro-makers provide the GUI.
There have plenty of GTK/Qt programmers, project management skills and
money, and a product to sell, which could gain market share if they
focused on this kind of things (apart from services, this is what RedHat,
SuSe, Mandrake and so on should do, IMHO).

Maybe what would be most interesting is a frontend and/or script to allow
simultaneous resizing of the filesystem and the underlying LV. Or there is
already such a program ?

Greetings, and thank you all for this great piece of software called LVM.

-- 
Jos� Luis Domingo L�pez
Linux Registered User #189436     Debian GNU/Linux Potato (P166 64 MB RAM)
 
jdomingo EN internautas PUNTO org  => � Spam ? Atente a las consecuencias
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Re: [linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[lvm]

José Luis Domingo López writes:
>> Is there any other X front ends for LVM maintenance other than the one on
>> freshmeat.net?
>
> This is a recurring idea that comes to my mind very often: having a
> reasonably good user interface on top on lvm tools would be nice.
> ...
> Moreover, last Friday I saw the graphical user interface that Veritas
> Volume Managar ships on Enterprise and higher-priced SCO Unixware
> licences. The UI seemed (IMHO) hardly useful,...

I used the Veritas software for a couple of years.  It was horrible.
The manuals were about 5 inches (13 cm) thick and were a morass of
self-referential jargon.  To understand anything, you had to understand
something else first.  This was recursive.  I would frequently suffer
from brain-stack overflow and I'd have to reboot my head.

Their command line interface was complex to the point of absurdity but
their X interface was worse.  It made remote administration dreadfully
slow on my remote installations since I had to use PPP over a dialed
line to get into the remote facilities.  Any operation could take
several minutes. 

> and taking into account that volume mangement is not precisely that
> kind of thing newbies tend to do, command line utilities are the
> best choice for now.

In some shops, everybody is a newbie.  I was a newbie in my first shop
(20+ years ago) but with the help of friends and e-mail (carried by UUCP,
no Internet) I could get the answers I needed to climb the learning curve.

In my opinion, the Linux LVM administrative interface is pretty well
done.  I was delighted to find the command line LVM interface to be
relatively clean, simple, and overlaid with a minimum of jargon.
At first glance, the command line arguments are a bit inconsistent
(e.g., when to use 'lv0' vs '/dev/vg0/lv0') but this is not such a
big problem given that most commands respond well to '--help' or 'man'.

With faster remote access becoming more common, it's feasible to
consider using a graphical interface to the LVM of a remote system.
However, in that vein, I wouldn't divert from development and
enhancement of the core system for even one day.  As with most
"infrastructure" components, stability, reliability, and consistency
are of prime importance and have to come first.  The "pretty wrappers"
around that core can come later.

It's not yet a mature system but it's being pursued by a group of smart,
dedicated people who are genuinely interested in finding and fixing problems.
This is the most important ingredient and Linux LVM has it in abundance

Larry

Re: [linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[Terje Kvernes]

lvm@winux.com writes:

> I used the Veritas software for a couple of years. It was horrible.
> The manuals were about 5 inches (13 cm) thick and were a morass of
> self-referential jargon. To understand anything, you had to
> understand something else first. This was recursive. I would
> frequently suffer from brain-stack overflow and I'd have to reboot
> my head.

  mental note: "don't go there". thank you. :)
 
> Their command line interface was complex to the point of absurdity
> but their X interface was worse. It made remote administration
> dreadfully slow on my remote installations since I had to use PPP
> over a dialed line to get into the remote facilities. Any operation
> could take several minutes.

  I hope we never get to the stage where (LVM) management is required
  to do anything. I've found most of the tools I've used with LVM to
  be nicely and cleanly done. it appears consistent. as long as my
  environment is just that, I'm generally happy. those things that
  aren't (even at the level of RedHats "useradd" and "addgroup") I
  basically avoid. 

  anyhow, my point being: a big thank you to the people behind LVM.
  good job. :)
 
> In some shops, everybody is a newbie. I was a newbie in my first
> shop (20+ years ago) but with the help of friends and e-mail
> (carried by UUCP, no Internet) I could get the answers I needed to
> climb the learning curve.

  urkle. right. *cough*

  I'm 24. feel free to ignore me. :)
 
> In my opinion, the Linux LVM administrative interface is pretty well
> done. I was delighted to find the command line LVM interface to be
> relatively clean, simple, and overlaid with a minimum of jargon. At
> first glance, the command line arguments are a bit inconsistent
> (e.g., when to use 'lv0' vs '/dev/vg0/lv0') but this is not such a
> big problem given that most commands respond well to '--help' or
> 'man'.

  agreed. :)
 
> With faster remote access becoming more common, it's feasible to
> consider using a graphical interface to the LVM of a remote system.

  that's one thing, but what I'd like is to see a GUI that basically
  talks to these underlying tools. using some sort of graphical
  representation of the information things like a 'vgscan' will
  produce.

> However, in that vein, I wouldn't divert from development and
> enhancement of the core system for even one day. 

  I certainly agree to that too.

> As with most "infrastructure" components, stability, reliability,
> and consistency are of prime importance and have to come first. The
> "pretty wrappers" around that core can come later.

  amen brother. :)
 
> It's not yet a mature system but it's being pursued by a group of
> smart, dedicated people who are genuinely interested in finding and
> fixing problems. This is the most important ingredient and Linux LVM
> has it in abundance

  yup. and that alone is a reason to use both. 

-- 
Terje

Re: [linux-lvm] LVM X front end

[Andreas Dilger]

Jos_ Luis Domingo L_pez
> Maybe what would be most interesting is a frontend and/or script to allow
> simultaneous resizing of the filesystem and the underlying LV. Or there is
> already such a program ?

man e2fsadm

Cheers, Andreas
-- 
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert