[linux-lvm] Change from one Linux Distro to another, keeping data on LVM

[linux-lvm] Change from one Linux Distro to another, keeping data on LVM

[Erik Forsberg]

Hi!

I'm about to change Linux distribution on a NFS file server for a
customer. They are currently running Fedora Core 3/2.6.12, and wants
to run either Suse 9.3 or Suse 10.

The filesystem served resides on an ext3 file system located on a LVM2
LV, with the volume group having two PVs. 

Are there anything special I need to think about when doing this? My
plan is something like this:

1) Make sure I have an updated copy of /etc/lvm available somewhere
   else. 
2) Boot upp the installer for Suse and erase the partitions on the
   first physical disk (well, actually on the first hardware RAID unit) that
   are not used as a PV, and install Suse on that area of the disk. 

Hopefully, the suse partitioner will not do anything stupid with my
PVs, my VG or my LV. It's probably best to create a new VG for the
operating system, and then mount the old LV from the old VG once the
OS is in place.

Any comments/experience on this kind of operation? 

Regards,
\EF
-- 
Erik Forsberg                OpenSource-based Thin Client Technology
Systems Analyst/Developer    Phone: +46-13-21 46 00    
Cendio AB    	             Web: http://www.cendio.com
		             

Re: [linux-lvm] Change from one Linux Distro to another, keeping data on LVM

[Dieter Stüken]

Erik Forsberg wrote:
> I'm about to change Linux distribution on a NFS file server for a
> customer. They are currently running Fedora Core 3/2.6.12, and wants
> to run either Suse 9.3 or Suse 10.
> 
> The filesystem served resides on an ext3 file system located on a LVM2
> LV, with the volume group having two PVs. 
> 
> Are there anything special I need to think about when doing this? My
> plan is something like this:
> 
> 1) Make sure I have an updated copy of /etc/lvm available somewhere
>    else. 
> 2) Boot upp the installer for Suse and erase the partitions on the
>    first physical disk (well, actually on the first hardware RAID unit) that
>    are not used as a PV, and install Suse on that area of the disk. 
> 
> Hopefully, the suse partitioner will not do anything stupid with my
> PVs, my VG or my LV. It's probably best to create a new VG for the
> operating system, and then mount the old LV from the old VG once the
> OS is in place.
> 
> Any comments/experience on this kind of operation? 

I performed a similar procedure with SuSE 10.1 last week.
The SuSE installer recognized all my LVM setups correctly.
But I wanted to install even root and swap on LVM and only
/boot on a tiny native partition. The SuSE installer
disliked this by default and proposed to erase all the
disk and to repartition it completely. But this was just
a proposal. After I explicitly configured how to use
my existing LVM configuration, the SuSE installer accepted
this (with a warning about root on LVM) but it worked well.

So I think, the installer won't do any bad things without asking
you. As I remember, this is true for 9.3, too. 

Apropos LVM: I suggest to use SuSE 10.1. With a SuSE 10.0 system
I again run into problems with its 2.6.13-15.8 kernel.
Under special conditions PVmove hung up. I had to reset/reboot and
"pvmove --abort" to recover the data. I observed this with some
SuSE 9.? last year, too.

Dieter.