[linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Michael]

Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Luca Berra]

On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 01:37:26AM -0700, Michael wrote:
>Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
>files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
i don't have any problem with this kind of setup, but you will find many
people here that will say just the opposite.

L.

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Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Martijn Schoemaker]

Hehehe the eternal discussion :)

Well, I just don't have the guts to put /boot in LVM so I just
put it on a 'md' device. Do boot managers like Lilo and Grub
cope with LVM ? I know Lilo does cope with md since it will
put the boot block on both physical drives when installing. And
how does it work when the bios needs to reference the boot image
which is in an LVM volume ? Does this work at all ? I just
never tried, but I am curious :)

And swap in LVM seems fine to me too. You should only keep
performance in mind. On the other hand, with the fast disks
nowadays I don't think you'll have any problems with normal
usage.

I also put my root in LVM, and this works great. Only thing is
that you might have some problems when migrating to newer LVM
versions, but it is do-able. Having your root in a resizable
volume has many advantages I think.

Just my few cents,
Martijn

Luca Berra wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 01:37:26AM -0700, Michael wrote:
> 
>> Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
>> files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
> 
> i don't have any problem with this kind of setup, but you will find many
> people here that will say just the opposite.
> 
> L.
> 

-- 
There's someone in my head, but it's not me.
--- Pink Floyd

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Luca Berra]

On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 11:42:09AM +0200, Martijn Schoemaker wrote:
>Well, I just don't have the guts to put /boot in LVM so I just
>put it on a 'md' device. Do boot managers like Lilo and Grub
>cope with LVM ? I know Lilo does cope with md since it will
there is a patch for lilo at http://www.saout.de/misc/
grub, someone mentioned a gentoo patch, but i have not looked at it yet

L.

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Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
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Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Harri Haataja]

On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 11:42:09AM +0200, Martijn Schoemaker wrote:
> Luca Berra wrote:
> >On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 01:37:26AM -0700, Michael wrote:

> >>Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical
> >>Linux files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
> >i don't have any problem with this kind of setup, but you will find
> >many people here that will say just the opposite.
> Hehehe the eternal discussion :)
> 
> Well, I just don't have the guts to put /boot in LVM so I just put it
> on a 'md' device. Do boot managers like Lilo and Grub cope with LVM ?
> I know Lilo does cope with md since it will put the boot block on both
> physical drives when installing. And how does it work when the bios
> needs to reference the boot image which is in an LVM volume ? Does
> this work at all ? I just never tried, but I am curious :)
> 
> I also put my root in LVM, and this works great. Only thing is that
> you might have some problems when migrating to newer LVM versions, but
> it is do-able. Having your root in a resizable volume has many
> advantages I think.

Especially with a "live" resizeable filesystem.


Doesn't HP-UX have a setup where you have /stand (IIRC) which will
always reside in the same place and should always boot etc and
everything else on LVM? I think there was a scheme like that. With
Linux, /boot and initrd's could be arranged like that. That is what root
raid and root fs/driver/bus as module -kernels usually do: you boot with
an initrd that has enough confs, utils and modules to get the devices,
start the raids and mount root to pivot to.

Now, for the non-DOS, could LVM have some extra features to allow making
all disks PV's and have /boot and initrd or /stand-like on a "special"
location that boot loaders etc can find and use to start the system?
There would just need to be enough to start LVM to a point where you can
mount the root LV.

(I may also be thinking Aix here. Such wonderful fs management ;)

-- 
I once waxed the floors of a nursing home, pulled off all the rubber
feet on the walkers, and yelled "FIRE!"

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Michael]

>>Having your root in a resizable volume has many advantages I think.
>>    
>>
When I installed Fedora Core 2 the other day the installation program 
was nice enough to allow me to setup LVM as easily as I could have setup 
none LVM partitions but it wouldn't let me put /boot in LVM. Since I'd 
already been told that doing so was possible I was a little disappointed 
but otherwise everything worked well. It did let me put /usr, /var, and 
/home in LVM.

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Luca Berra]

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 06:31:18PM +0300, Harri Haataja wrote:
>Doesn't HP-UX have a setup where you have /stand (IIRC) which will
>always reside in the same place and should always boot etc and
>everything else on LVM? I think there was a scheme like that. With
not exactly (i am not going to dive into details since i don't think it
is relevant to the list)
but hp-ux is designed for hp-9000 hardware, while linux is designed to
support a much broader range of hardware (including shitty hardware like
the PC)

>Linux, /boot and initrd's could be arranged like that. That is what root
How is that different from what we already have now using lilo and an
lvm aware initrd? except that we don't have any constraint on placing
the kernel and initrd (except for hardware limitation of said shitty
platform)

L.
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Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
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Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Harri Haataja]

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 10:53:15PM +0200, Luca Berra wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 06:31:18PM +0300, Harri Haataja wrote:
> >Doesn't HP-UX have a setup where you have /stand (IIRC) which will
> >always reside in the same place and should always boot etc and
> >everything else on LVM? I think there was a scheme like that. With
> not exactly (i am not going to dive into details since i don't think
> it is relevant to the list) but hp-ux is designed for hp-9000
> hardware, while linux is designed to support a much broader range of
> hardware (including shitty hardware like the PC)

Indeed. That tends to come up. But there are ways to go around those. I
think some people are looking for neater ways that don't have to work
everywhere, but can be made to work somewhere.

I was just adding(?) to the speculation.

> >Linux, /boot and initrd's could be arranged like that. That is what root
> How is that different from what we already have now using lilo and an
> lvm aware initrd? except that we don't have any constraint on placing
> the kernel and initrd (except for hardware limitation of said shitty
> platform)

It probably isn't. Only not everyone seems to be using initrd's. The
latter paragraph was probably just stating the obvious.


If there was something I set out to say in that message, maybe it was:
Would there be a way to arrange kernel and initrd into a position where
the bootloader (including especially grub) can find it without using a
specific partition for it? Then, for example, you could raid1 two whole
disks, mark the md device as a pv and install a system on volumes there.

-- 
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, May 31, 2004 at 02:03:27PM +0300, Harri Haataja wrote:
>If there was something I set out to say in that message, maybe it was:
>Would there be a way to arrange kernel and initrd into a position where
>the bootloader (including especially grub) can find it without using a
>specific partition for it? Then, for example, you could raid1 two whole
>disks, mark the md device as a pv and install a system on volumes there.
i don't grub much, my personal belief is that linux has too many
hw/filesystem combinations for it to work perfectly.
what you say could be done if not for a minor glitch, i don't remember
if this has been changed with lvm2.
'there is no room inside the VGDA to store a boot sector'

L.

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Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
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Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Jeff Layton]

On Sun, 2004-05-16 at 01:37 -0700, Michael wrote:

> Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
> files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?

I run everything on LVM except for /boot, primarily because I use GRUB
as a bootloader and it doesn't understand LVM volumes. As long as your
bootloader understands LVM volumes there should be no problem with it.
-- 
Jeff Layton <jtlayton@poochiereds.net>

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Wolfram Schlich]

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* Jeff Layton <jtlayton@poochiereds.net> [2004-05-16 13:00]:
> On Sun, 2004-05-16 at 01:37 -0700, Michael wrote:
> 
> > Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
> > files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
> 
> I run everything on LVM except for /boot, primarily because I use GRUB
> as a bootloader and it doesn't understand LVM volumes. As long as your
> bootloader understands LVM volumes there should be no problem with it.

Gentoo bug 42433: [PATCH] GRUB x86 LVM support
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42433

Altough it's not yet finished, it looks quite interesting.
-- 
Wolfram Schlich; Friedhofstr. 8, D-88069 Tettnang; +49-(0)178-SCHLICH

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Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Michael]

>I run everything on LVM except for /boot, primarily because I use GRUB
>as a bootloader and it doesn't understand LVM volumes. As long as your
>bootloader understands LVM volumes there should be no problem with it.
>  
>
I use Lilo. Does Lilo understand LVM volumes?

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Jeff Layton]

On Sun, 2004-05-16 at 07:05 -0700, Michael wrote:
> I use Lilo. Does Lilo understand LVM volumes?

I think there are some versions that do and some patches, but it's
probably safest to assume that it doesn't. You might also want to
consider making the switch to GRUB -- it's more forgiving of mistakes
than LILO is.

<shameless plug>

If you're just getting started, you might want to have a look at the
article I recently wrote for SysAdmin Mag on Linux root disk mirroring.
It covers using MD and LVM to set up mirrored rootdisks. 

It was in the April issue of sysadmin mag...

http://samag.com/articles/2004/0404/

</shameless plug>

The article covers LVM1, but doing this with LVM2 is pretty similar. If
you're doing this with LVM2, you'll probably also need the
lvm2create_initrd script so you can create an initrd image:

http://poochiereds.net/svn/lvm2

It's not complete yet (which is why it's not in the official tarball),
but works fairly well with most configurations.

-- 
Jeff Layton <jtlayton@poochiereds.net>

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Dan Merillat]

On Sun, 16 May 2004, Michael wrote:

> 
> >I run everything on LVM except for /boot, primarily because I use GRUB
> >as a bootloader and it doesn't understand LVM volumes. As long as your
> >bootloader understands LVM volumes there should be no problem with it.
> > 
> >
> I use Lilo. Does Lilo understand LVM volumes?

Yes, but to put / on LVM you need to use initrd.  You also probably want
to force the minor number of <VG>/root to something fixed, since the
kernel isn't mounting by name at that point.

I built an initrd with busybox, LVM, megaraid and bash.  Great for
diagnosing problems.

(Recent LILO has a bug with device-mapper.  Either downgrade or upgrade
to the latest, or follow the debian bugtracking on it)

--Dan

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Peter Valdemar Morch]

Running RH9 with /root on LVM gave me no end of headaches when upgrading 
to 2.6 kernels. Primarily because I had to make a initrd RAM disk image.

So now it works fine. But next time I set up my own box, I'll make sure 
that at least /boot and /root are no-frills partitions.

Peter

Michael mogmios-at-mlug.missouri.edu |Lists| wrote:
> Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
> files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
> _______________________________________________
> linux-lvm mailing list
> linux-lvm@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
> read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/

-- 
Peter Valdemar M�rch
http://www.XXXXXXXXX

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[raoul bhatia]

what about compiling these modules into your kernel, since they are an 
integrated part of your setup?

best regards,
raoul bhatia

Peter Valdemar Morch wrote:

> Running RH9 with /root on LVM gave me no end of headaches when upgrading 
> to 2.6 kernels. Primarily because I had to make a initrd RAM disk image.
> 
> So now it works fine. But next time I set up my own box, I'll make sure 
> that at least /boot and /root are no-frills partitions.
> 
> Peter
> 
> Michael mogmios-at-mlug.missouri.edu |Lists| wrote:
> 
>> Is it okay to put everything, including /boot and other critical Linux 
>> files on an LVM drive? How about swap space?
>> _______________________________________________
>> linux-lvm mailing list
>> linux-lvm@redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
>> read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
> 
> 

-- 
____________________________________________________________________
raoul bhatia                              email.    r.bhatia@ipax.tk
- ipax.tk -                               web.    http://www.ipax.tk
chief technician, support                 irc.      #ipax (quakenet)
____________________________________________________________________

Re: [linux-lvm] /boot on lvm?

[Dan Merillat]

On Mon, 17 May 2004, raoul bhatia wrote:

> what about compiling these modules into your kernel, since they are an 
> integrated part of your setup?

You still have to vgscan; vgchange -ay in order to activate the volume
group, so that gets done in initrd.  Still, it's fairly painless.

--Dan