LVM/ad hoc partition management and server partition design (was Re: Controlling servers (e.g. apache, samba))

[Eric Dunbar]

On 05/02/07, Gabriel Dragffy <dragffy at yandex.ru> wrote:
> Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > I haven't decided on my partitioning scheme given that I spent the
> > whole of 2 seconds deciding upon a partitioning scheme with my current
> > server that has haunted me for MORE THAN TWO years.
> >
> > I now figure I should put a little more thought into this one ;-)
> > (Last time round, 2 GB for my System 9 BootX boot loader ( should've
> > been 50 MB), 25 GB for OS X 10.2 (for the hell of it), 8 GB for /  and
> > 35 GB for /home... I eventually formatted the OS X partition and
> > symlinked it to a specific directory in /home because I ran out of
> > room on /home... probably could've done it more elegantly but it works
> > ;-).
>
> If you are setting up partitions for linux, you'd be crazy not to go
> with LVM, you can increase the size of logical volumes online, and
> shrink them offline. All the problems that you say you encountered are
> solved by LVM. Obviously LVM won't play nice with OS X but you can do:
> 100MB primary partition for /boot
> 10GB primary partition for OS X
> all the rest as a LVM, then you can install ubuntu in to the LVM and
> other distros too.

Hmm. I recall reading about LVM but my kludge (symlink to the
reformatted OS X partition) was working nicely so I wasn't worried
about trying to get LVM working (plus, the server was working smoothly
-- "if it ain't broke, don't fix it").

So, do I need to plan to install LVM now, or later?

However, I am trying to build my own version of an "expansion proof"
server that will avoid the LVM trap. The server will be running inside
a VMware virtual machine with a dynamically re-sizable virtual hard
disk file (10 GB enough?) and the files to be served and shared will
be stored on two real partitions mapped to the virtual machine (e.g.
one partition mapped to /var/www and another mapped to /home).

This will allow me to back-up the VM by simply copying the VM's
directory and also allow me to rearrange the real (physical)
partitions without having to worry about server configuration. Also,
with the server in a virtual machine, I can move it from one 32 bit
i86 server to another by simply moving the virtual machine.

Eric.