[CentOS] formatting large volume

Wed Oct 15 19:20:53 UTC 2008
Miskell, Craig <Craig.Miskell at agresearch.co.nz>

> >Just pvcreate the whole disk and forgo partitioning it. Then create a
> >vg out of it and start creating lvs.
>
> Hey Ross,
> I thought it was best practice to create an LVM partition
> such that the
> disk could be recognizable under all circumstances such as if
> the volume
> was moved? Is that not really "best practice" anymore?

I'm not Ross, but I'll chime in:  I heartily recommend creating an LVM partition rather than using the entire disk.  It will cover you for those times when you are booting off the Rescue or Install CD.  When anaconda(?) sees an LVM "formatted" disk, it thinks it's garbage because there's no valid partition table.  It then asks you if you want to format the disk (or words to that effect; I forget the precise details), with the default set to YES (WTH?  Default option is the most dangerous?  That's nutty).

>From experience I can tell you that selecting "Yes" is really really bad for your LVM meta data.  Let's just say it took a while to restore the 1TB of data the time I miss-clicked YES from a finger twitch at the wrong moment while moving the mouse.

<Sigh>

Craig Miskell


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