[CentOS] Move hard disk to a new machine

Thu Mar 20 08:58:06 UTC 2008
William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>

On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 17:49 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> On Saturday, March 15, 2008 3:41 PM -0400 "William L. Maltby" 
> <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> > Unless it is an LVM volume? OP didn't say much. If so, export the volume
> > first, then import it on the target machine.
> 
> For those of us not familiar with the details of LVM, what does the 
> export/import do?

>From "man vgimport":

DESCRIPTION
       vgimport allows you to make a  Volume  Group  that  was
       previously exported using vgexport(8) known to the system again,
       perhaps after moving its Physical Volumes from a different
       machine.

Essentially, IIUC, vgexport updates the LVM configuration to remove the
group from the system. I *guess* it might also put some status
information into the descriptors on the volume being removed so that
critical information is available when a vgimport is done.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that moving the volume without
doing this makes for extra work when re-installing, though I can say
that it can be done. Again, from first-hand experience.

> 
> I was going to take the 300 GB PATA drive out of an old HP Vectra and move 
> it to a newer box with more memory, and didn't realize I'd need to do this 
> step.

One of the *few* advantages to not using LVM. Overall, I'd rather use it
in most cases.

> <snip sig stuff>

-- 
Bill