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Linux LVM - Logical Volume Manager: o o o o o o o o o

This document describes how to configure and use logical volume management (LVM) in Linux. The key steps are: 1. Create physical partitions 2. Create physical volumes from the partitions 3. Create a volume group to combine the physical volumes 4. Create logical volumes within the volume group 5. Format and mount the logical volumes to use as filesystems

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111 views

Linux LVM - Logical Volume Manager: o o o o o o o o o

This document describes how to configure and use logical volume management (LVM) in Linux. The key steps are: 1. Create physical partitions 2. Create physical volumes from the partitions 3. Create a volume group to combine the physical volumes 4. Create logical volumes within the volume group 5. Format and mount the logical volumes to use as filesystems

Uploaded by

lemo
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Linux lvm - Logical Volume Manager

Contents[Hide]

o o o o o o o o o

This is what we are going to do Create Partitions Create physical volumes Create Virtual Group Create Logical Volumes Create File system on logical volumes Edit /etc/fstab

Mount logical volumes Extend logical volume Remove logical volume

This article describes a basic logic behind a Linux logical volume manager by showing real examples of configuration and usage. Although Debian Linux will be used for this tutorial, you can also apply the same command line syntax with other Linux distributions such as Red Hat, Mandriva, SuSe Linux and others.

1. This is what we are going to do

2. Create Partitions
For this Linux lvm example you need an unpartitioned hard disk /dev/sdb. First you need to create physical volumes. To do this you need partitions or a whole disk. It is possible to run pvcreate command on /dev/sdb, but I prefer to use partitions and from partitions I later create physical volumes.

Use your preferred partitioning tool to create partitions. In this example I have used cfdisk.

Partitions are ready to use.

3. Create physical volumes


Use the pvcreate command to create physical volumes.

# pvcreate /dev/sdb1 # pvcreate /dev/sdb2

The pvdisplay command displays all physical volumes on your system.

# pvdisplay

Alternatively the following command should be used:

# pvdisplay /dev/sdb1

4. Create Virtual Group


At this stage you need to create a virtual group which will serve as a container for your physical volumes. To create a virtual group with the name "mynew_vg" which will include /dev/sdb1 partition, you can issue the following command:

# vgcreate mynew_vg /dev/sdb1

To include both partitions at once you can use this command:

# vgcreate mynew_vg /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2

Feel free to add new physical volumes to a virtual group by using the vgextend command.

# vgextend mynew_vg /dev/sdb2

5. Create Logical Volumes


From your big cake (virtual group) you can cut pieces (logical volumes) which will be treated as a partitions for your linux system. To create a logical volume, named "vol01", with a size of 400 MB from the virtual group "mynew_vg" use the following command:

create a logical volume of size 400 MB -L 400 create a logical volume of size 4 GB -L 4G

# lvcreate -L 400 -n vol01 mynew_vg

With a following example you will create a logical volume with a size of 1GB and with the name vol02:

# lvcreate -L 1000 -n vol02 mynew_vg

Note the free size in virtual group.

6. Create File system on logical volumes


The logical volume is almost ready to use. All you need to do is to create a filesystem.:

# mkfs.ext3 -m 0 /dev/mynew_vg/vol01

the -m option specifies the percentage reserved for the super-user, set this to 0 if you wish not to waste any space, the default is

5%.

7. Edit /etc/fstab

Add an entry for your newly created logical volume into /etc/fstab

7.1. Mount logical volumes


Before you mount do not forget to create a mount point.

# mkdir /home/foobar

8. Extend logical volume


The biggest advantage of logical volume manager is that you can extend your logical volumes any time you are running out of the space. To increase the size of a logical volume by another 800 MB you can run this command:

# lvextend -L +800 /dev/mynew_vg/vol01

The command above does not actually increase the physical size of volume, to do that you need to:

# resize2fs

/dev/mynew_vg/vol01

Look at the figure below to see what problems you may encounter when extending a volume:

9. Remove logical volume


The command lvremove can be used to remove logical volumes. Make sure that before you attempt to remove logical volumes your logical volume does not have any valuable data stored on it, moreover, make sure the volume is unmounted.

# lvdisplay

# lvremove /dev/mynew_vg/vol02

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