[linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[giovanni_re]

What are the best tools (ie sw) for doing disk partitioning?  Preferably
GUI. but, console mode suggestions welcome if that's best, or all there
is.

For use in KUbuntu 10.4.

[This list is for all LVM questions, not just RedHat distro questions,
yes?]


==
KDE 3 used to have qtPartEd, which used to be able to actually _create_
partitions. That's not in KDE4, ie in KUbuntu 10.4.  

I've installed GPartEd, but it can't see into LVs - Logical volumes. 
Thus, it can't _create_ anything there.

I'd greatly appreciate a competent GUI partitioner.  I only partition
disks a few times per year, & it's great to have the GUI have the
commands available to do the partitions, so one doesn't have to spend
the time to keep up on the specifics of commands to deal with new disk
formats & partitioning methods, & do hand calculations of partitions
sizes, etc.


==
I installed KU 10.4 with the alternate installer.  I've used the console
mode installer for many years, probably because it gives me the ability
to partition my disks well.

I usually put, in order from the beginning, two Linux partititions, a
swap partition, then make a LVM for the 4th partition. & put a "/home"
partition there, then leave space for further partitions - like, if i
want to add another linux partition - so I can set up different distros
& boot into them.


[BTW, is making that 4th partition a logical one, & putting more
partitions in there necessary anymore? Used to be that disks were
limited at 4 partitions, & one had to make a big 4th partition & put sub
partitions inside that.  After all these years - in Linux, can we yet
put as many partitions as we want without making a logical partition?  I
think there was a limit of 16 partitions before.  Can more than that be
done now?]


==
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.

But, GPartEd doesn't show what's in the LVM.  And, thus it further can't
create any partions there.  - It's a tragedy GPartEd isn't better
maintained.  :(


==
So, what are the easiest tools to create additional partions in Logical
Volumes?

Thanks :)

==  Join in the Global weekly meetings, via VOIP, about all Free SW HW & Culture
http://sites.google.com/site/berkeleytip/

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2010, giovanni_re wrote:

> What are the best tools (ie sw) for doing disk partitioning?  Preferably
> GUI. but, console mode suggestions welcome if that's best, or all there
> is.

This answer is perhaps a little snarky, but LVM is the best partitioning
tool. :-)  Just make the entire drive a PV.  

Reasons to still use the obsolete partition DOS table:

1) so other OSes know there is data on the drive
2) when using software RAID (md driver), partition type allows auto
   recognition and start of md devices.
3) you are using the grub boot loader, which doesn't speak LVM yet

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
    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.

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Harald Heigl]

Hi!
>[This list is for all LVM questions, not just RedHat distro questions,
>yes?]

Yes this list is for lvm in general ...

>[BTW, is making that 4th partition a logical one, & putting more
>partitions in there necessary anymore?

The limitation of the 4 partitions is not a linux thing, the "Master Boot
Record" (MBR) is on a single sector on your disk (sectors are usually
512Bytes big), it's a historical thing. The MBR can hold 4 entries and not
more.

>I'd greatly appreciate a competent GUI partitioner.  I only partition
>disks a few times per year, & it's great to have the GUI have the
>commands available to do the partitions ...

As said you may use one drive as pv and divide that into lvs. In Fedora
there is also a gui for lvm, but I didn't use it really, so I can't
recommend it. I always use command-line for this (partitioning (if ever
necessary) with fdisk and lv-commands)

The reasons for dos-partiton as Stuart said:
>3) you are using the grub boot loader, which doesn't speak LVM yet
3) If you have kubuntu 10.04 (I suggest 10.4 is a spell error) you should
have grub2 and therefore it should be lvm-aware even on your boot disk (but
not every distro can handle this, that�s true ...)

Greetings,
Harald Heigl

>-----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----
>Von: linux-lvm-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:linux-lvm-bounces@redhat.com]
>Im Auftrag von giovanni_re
>Gesendet: Samstag, 24. Juli 2010 05:28
>An: linux-lvm@redhat.com
>Betreff: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for
>LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor
>
>What are the best tools (ie sw) for doing disk partitioning?  Preferably
>GUI. but, console mode suggestions welcome if that's best, or all there
>is.
>
>For use in KUbuntu 10.4.
>
>[This list is for all LVM questions, not just RedHat distro questions,
>yes?]
>
>
>==
>KDE 3 used to have qtPartEd, which used to be able to actually _create_
>partitions. That's not in KDE4, ie in KUbuntu 10.4.
>
>I've installed GPartEd, but it can't see into LVs - Logical volumes.
>Thus, it can't _create_ anything there.
>
>I'd greatly appreciate a competent GUI partitioner.  I only partition
>disks a few times per year, & it's great to have the GUI have the
>commands available to do the partitions, so one doesn't have to spend
>the time to keep up on the specifics of commands to deal with new disk
>formats & partitioning methods, & do hand calculations of partitions
>sizes, etc.
>
>
>==
>I installed KU 10.4 with the alternate installer.  I've used the console
>mode installer for many years, probably because it gives me the ability
>to partition my disks well.
>
>I usually put, in order from the beginning, two Linux partititions, a
>swap partition, then make a LVM for the 4th partition. & put a "/home"
>partition there, then leave space for further partitions - like, if i
>want to add another linux partition - so I can set up different distros
>& boot into them.
>
>
>[BTW, is making that 4th partition a logical one, & putting more
>partitions in there necessary anymore? Used to be that disks were
>limited at 4 partitions, & one had to make a big 4th partition & put sub
>partitions inside that.  After all these years - in Linux, can we yet
>put as many partitions as we want without making a logical partition?  I
>think there was a limit of 16 partitions before.  Can more than that be
>done now?]
>
>
>==
>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.
>
>But, GPartEd doesn't show what's in the LVM.  And, thus it further can't
>create any partions there.  - It's a tragedy GPartEd isn't better
>maintained.  :(
>
>
>==
>So, what are the easiest tools to create additional partions in Logical
>Volumes?
>
>Thanks :)
>
>==  Join in the Global weekly meetings, via VOIP, about all Free SW HW &
>Culture
>http://sites.google.com/site/berkeleytip/
>
>_______________________________________________
>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/

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Bryn M. Reeves]

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Hash: SHA1

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.

I'm a bit confused by your requirements. Are the other distros going to
be installed as virtual machines (e.g. using KVM/Xen etc) or are you
planning to boot them on "bare metal"?

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.

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.

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.

Regards,
Bryn.
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Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Stuart D. Gathman]

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 <stuart@bmsi.com>
    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.

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Bryn M. Reeves]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 07/26/2010 01:16 PM, Stuart D. Gathman wrote:
> 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.

Not used Xen for a long time but that's good to know - iirc it did not
behave like this the last time I used it (with xvda disks).

> 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.

That's exactly what I was suggesting :-)

Adding nested partitions _inside_ the LVs (which is what the OP seemed
to want) is going to complicate things significantly for bare-metal.

> 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.

Yes although you still need to be a little careful during installations
to make sure that there aren't any conflicts (I often want to have a
couple of versions of the same distribution, or even different instances
of the same version of the same distribution installed together). Also
remember never to re-format /boot during an install :)

Regards,
Bryn.



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Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:

> > 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.
> 
> Not used Xen for a long time but that's good to know - iirc it did not
> behave like this the last time I used it (with xvda disks).

xen disk definition on dom0:

disk = [ "phy:/dev/rootvg/C5MAIL,xvda1,w",
         "phy:/dev/rootvg/M_SWAP,xvda2,w",
	 "phy:/dev/rootvg/MAIL,xvda3,w" ]

What guest OS running xen kernel sees:

# df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1            10165048   1554800   8190820  16% /
/dev/xvda3            83716784  48877780  30644700  62% /home
tmpfs                  1048664         0   1048664   0% /dev/shm

However, it doesn't go so far as to let you access the first sector
of /dev/xvda

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
    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.

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Bryn M. Reeves]

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On 07/26/2010 02:59 PM, Stuart D. Gathman wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
> 
>>> 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.
>>
>> Not used Xen for a long time but that's good to know - iirc it did not
>> behave like this the last time I used it (with xvda disks).
> 
> xen disk definition on dom0:
> 
> disk = [ "phy:/dev/rootvg/C5MAIL,xvda1,w",
>          "phy:/dev/rootvg/M_SWAP,xvda2,w",
> 	 "phy:/dev/rootvg/MAIL,xvda3,w" ]

Hmm, that's kinda neat. I think when I was using Xen routinely the disk=
syntax was limited to associating a backing store with a whole-disk xvda
device.

> # df
> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/xvda1            10165048   1554800   8190820  16% /
> /dev/xvda3            83716784  48877780  30644700  62% /home
> tmpfs                  1048664         0   1048664   0% /dev/shm
> 
> However, it doesn't go so far as to let you access the first sector
> of /dev/xvda

Understandable but I can't help but wondering what happens if you try? :)

Does it return zeros or just error out?

Regards,
Bryn.
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Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:

> > # df
> > Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/xvda1            10165048   1554800   8190820  16% /
> > /dev/xvda3            83716784  48877780  30644700  62% /home
> > tmpfs                  1048664         0   1048664   0% /dev/shm
> > 
> > However, it doesn't go so far as to let you access the first sector
> > of /dev/xvda
> 
> Understandable but I can't help but wondering what happens if you try? :)
> 
> Does it return zeros or just error out?

It doesn't create the /dev entry:

# ls -l /dev/xvda*
brw-r----- 1 root disk 202, 1 Jul 26 06:11 /dev/xvda1
brw-r----- 1 root disk 202, 2 Jul 26 06:10 /dev/xvda2
brw-r----- 1 root disk 202, 3 Jul 26 06:10 /dev/xvda3

I will try manually creating minor device 0 sometime, but not on a
production system!

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
    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.

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, - for having multi distros bootable - GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[giovanni_re]

Thanks Stuart, Harald & Bryn for your replies :)


On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:45:59 +0100, "Bryn M. Reeves" <bmr@redhat.com>
said:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 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.
> 
> I'm a bit confused by your requirements. Are the other distros going to
> be installed as virtual machines (e.g. using KVM/Xen etc) or are you
> planning to boot them on "bare metal"?

Not as Virtual Machines (VMs), so must be what you are calling "bare
metal".

Ie, booting up into GRUB should show:
sda1    - linux distro 1
sda2    - linux distro 2
sda??   - in the sda4 LVM, linux distro 3
sda??+1 - in the sda4 LVM, linux distro 4
etc.


SDA4 LM currently has a /home data partition, & free space

The only place I see to put another distro partition is in the sda4 LVM.


==
BTW, I used to put an extended partition in sda4, & inside that create
logical partitions to put more distros into.

But, this time, using the KUbuntu 10.4 "alternate" (I always install
with the alternate install) installer CD (text, not gui mode), the 4th
partition was created as a LVM, not an extended 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.

Based on your discussion following your post, with Stuart, is that still
true?


In any case, now that Logical Volume technology exists, in addition to
the previous Extended Partition technology, what is the way to configure
the partitions with LVs to have multiple partitions available to GRUB to
boot from?


> 
> 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.

==  Join in the Global weekly meetings, via VOIP, about all Free SW HW & Culture
http://sites.google.com/site/berkeleytip/

Re: [linux-lvm] Disk Partitioning tools, - for having multi distros bootable - GUI preferably- best for LVM Logical Volume Management ; jor

[Stuart D Gathman]

On 07/26/2010 06:32 PM, giovanni_re wrote:
> Not as Virtual Machines (VMs), so must be what you are calling "bare
> metal".
>
> Ie, booting up into GRUB should show:
> sda1    - linux distro 1
> sda2    - linux distro 2
> sda??   - in the sda4 LVM, linux distro 3
> sda??+1 - in the sda4 LVM, linux distro 4
> etc.
>
>
> SDA4 LM currently has a /home data partition, & free space
>
> The only place I see to put another distro partition is in the sda4 LVM.
> Based on your discussion following your post, with Stuart, is that still
> true?
>
>
> In any case, now that Logical Volume technology exists, in addition to
> the previous Extended Partition technology, what is the way to configure
> the partitions with LVs to have multiple partitions available to GRUB to
> boot from?
>   
Use a large /boot partition.  The last time I used Ubuntu, it did not
easily support having a separate /boot filesystem (instead making the
root fs bootable), so that could be a problem, unless Ubuntu also
supports grub 2 (with LVM support).

So, with distros that support separate /boot (e.g. Fedora and EL), just
share the /boot partition between them (they should name the files to
avoid conflicts).  Each grub entry specifies the root filesystem, which
can be a LV. 
There can be multiple instances with the same kernel version (e.g. F12
before scary update, F12 after scary update).

With distros that don't support /boot, but *do* support grub 2 (and you
have grub 2), then grub entries refer to kernel files in LVs for the distro.

With distros that support both, do it either way.

With OS that do not support LVM (E.g. Windows), you will have to have a
partition and chain load in grub.