From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mx1.redhat.com (ext-mx07.extmail.prod.ext.phx2.redhat.com [10.5.110.11]) by int-mx01.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o6QCH9Sr023590 for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:17:09 -0400 Received: from mail.bmsi.com (www.bmsi.com [24.248.44.156]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o6QCGvLU002075 for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:16:58 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:16:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "Stuart D. Gathman" In-Reply-To: <4C4D4B47.8000201@redhat.com> Message-ID: References: <1279942095.12963.1386480183@webmail.messagingengine.com> <4C4D4B47.8000201@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor 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 Cc: giovanni_re On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Bryn M. Reeves wrote: > On 07/24/2010 04:28 AM, giovanni_re wrote: > > So, I've got that big LV 4th partition, with empty space (2TB drive), > > and now I want to create some more linux partitions so I can install > > some other distros. > > If you want VMs then partitioning an LV makes sense. You present the > entire LV as a virtual disk to the guest and the emulated devices appear > to that OS as a regular partitioned disk. This is a very common technique. Using Xen modified OSes, you don't need to partition the LVs. The xen storage driver presents each mapped block device as a virtual partition. > If you want to boot these directly on the hardware however you might > want to reconsider your approach. Partitioned LVs are not supported > out-of-the box by any distro that I know of. I think you would need to > mess around with custom boot scripts to get the system to boot properly > and you'll probably need to do some special tricks to get a standard > distro installer to install onto these partitioned LVs. You would also > need to figure out a way of sharing a /boot partition (on the physical > disk) between all the installed distributions to avoid conflicts since > PC BIOS boot support does not handle LVM devices. Booting multiple LVM supporting OSes works fine with LVM. Have a LV for the root filesystem of each Linux OS, and have them all on the Grub menu. Make the /boot partition extra large. I do this with every laptop and desktop as SOP. Make Fedora upgrades much less fearful. If necessary, you can boot non LVM OSes installed in a DOS partition via a chain menu entry in grub. (e.g. boot Windows) > If this is your goal then you might find it easier to allocate a single > LV to each new installation and use that directly. With a bit of fancy > footwork in grub (and as long as each distro supports installation to an > existing LVM2 volume group) I think this should work and would be easier > and simpler to set up. If every distro sticks to reasonable naming conventions in /boot (so that they don't step on each others kernels), then it all works fine. -- Stuart D. Gathman Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154 "Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.