From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from agk.fab.redhat.com (agk.fab.redhat.com [10.33.0.19]) by pobox.fab.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l77J1snU008588 for ; Tue, 7 Aug 2007 15:01:54 -0400 Received: from agk by agk.fab.redhat.com with local (Exim 4.34) id 1IIUJW-0006Kg-05 for linux-lvm@redhat.com; Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:01:54 +0100 Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 20:01:53 +0100 From: Alasdair G Kergon Subject: Re: [linux-lvm] Best practice: metadata backup Message-ID: <20070807190153.GV2064@agk.fab.redhat.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Reply-To: LVM general discussion and development List-Id: LVM general discussion and development List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: LVM general discussion and development On Sun, Aug 05, 2007 at 12:17:15AM -0400, Stuart D. Gathman wrote: > LVM keeps backups of metadata in /etc/lvm (or some distro specific place). > This is not especially useful when the root filesystem itself is in LVM. > I have been making rsync backups of /etc/lvm to /boot (which is non-LVM > since grub doesn't support LVM until 1.95). Should I make /etc/lvm a > symlink to /boot/lvm? If you give /boot enough free space. You can also change the location by setting the environment variable LVM_SYSTEM_DIR. > When grub supports LVM, and the entire disk is LVM (no partition table), > how will backups be made? Just like any other file backups - tape, CD, internet: you choose! > AIX treats the boot LV specially, and ensures > that its PEs are contiguous at the beginning of the disk(s). Nothing is stopping a linux installer doing that today: --alloc contiguous and specify the extents. But if grub supports LVM2 properly (add a trivial mapping layer from LV extents to physical sectors, then populate it from the LVM2 metadata across an agreed interface from a library maintained as part of the lvm2 package) it won't require anything like that of course - the hardest problem I think is actually for it to identify the right disks to use. Alasdair -- agk@redhat.com