anacron

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 07:34:45PM -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote:

> 1. LVM is by no means a standard tool, not one major distribution
> partitions a system with LVM by default and out of several big install
> bases I have seen nobody used it (people in need of large quantities of
> dynamic storage generally prefer hardware based solutions). These things
> considered I would not call LVM stable. Also, the "whole world" as
> represented by kernel developers seems to be moving towards EVMS even as
> we speak :)

"standard" is not the same as "used by default".  Linux LVM is the most
common storage management system for Linux servers.

I've used it in many mission-critical systems and consider it to be
extremely stable.

> 2. Unless a system is pre-partitioned using LVM there is no reason for
> it to be "always there in case of need".

This depends on whether you have LVM volumes or not. ;-)  If you do, then
it's an essential recovery and administration tool.

> 3. LVM can hardly be called "widely applicable" for a desktop system,
> and for that matter for a server system (see argument #1)

I must admit that LVM is questionable on this point.  However, we made an
explicit decision in the early days of Warty that the base system would
include storage management tools (e.g., LVM, EVMS, parted, tools for all
popular Linux filesystems).  They cost very little in terms of system
resources, and are invaluable for diagnostics and recovery when they are in
use.

I'm not sure how we got to discussing LVM, though. :-)  The question was
whether to promote anacron, and there seems to be consensus that it would be
useful to do so.

-- 
 - mdz