I have been using LVM with debian/amd64 since I first set up the box,
including the root FS - a relatively long time now. It is quite stable, I
can tell you that much. I myself use reiserfs, which you can, along with
LVM, resize online and so forth. It's not your only filesystem choice by
any means; I won't get into that whole debate. :)
At the time I set up, the installer had menu choices for installing over
LVM, but these were broken. I had to install on a non LVM partition, set
up LVM by hand, and copy over (which wasn't so hard, really). Not sure if
this is fixed in later installer releases.
You're always going to have at least your little /boot filesystem
(containing your kernel and initrd) outside of LVM.
The tricky piece was getting the root filesystem in LVM; for that you need
an initial ramdisk. For a while, there was a script to create one
automatically for LVM1, but not for LVM2, so I had to build these initrd's
by hand. Now LVM2 has a script, but it's kind of broken for amd64, since
(for whatever reason, I'd love to know) when ia32 libs (in or out of
chroot) are in your library path, they pop up as dependencies of major,
presumably non-ia32 binaries when you ldd, and that causes the LVM2 initrd
creation script to copy them over (clever), but then the non-standard
library paths are not searched (even when I create an /etc/ld.so.conf on
the ramdisk, by the way - figure that one out). Then some important
binaries can't link and you wedge. So before you run the initrd creation
script, you may as well move your /etc/ld.so.conf aside and run ldconfig
first.
Overall it's about remembering, too, that everytime you rebuild your
kernel image packages you have to go through this procedure and create a
working ramdisk, along with a custom grub/menu.lst that uses it. Of course
the debian kernel image scripts wipe out whatever grub configuration you
have in place and replace it with the generic one that won't work...
But all in all, once you get it working, it's quite good, and I believe
you do see a good performance benefit with, for instance, LVM striped
across two SATA drives. And of course you get all the regular benefits of
LVM if, for instance, you add a third drive, etc.
If you're interested in doing this, I can email you sample configs and
other details...
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, J.A. de Vries wrote:
Hi list,
I was considering to use LVM on my brand new box now that is working. I
have never used it before, but want to learn about it. (How's that for a
reason? }:-) Before I start this little endeavor I'd like to ask if
anyone knows of any caveats of using LVM[12] on debian-amd64. Also what
are the feelings on the list of adding root to LVM? This is not a
critical box in any way, but as it is supposed to be a server stability
is of some concern.
Grx HdV
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