At Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:37:21 -0500 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > > In my old computer I have a much bigger hard drive then in this one -- > and I plan to hand that old computer down to one of my sons -- keeping > his current drive from an even older computer. Currently the hard > drive on my old computer has SuSE Linux, but that will go. I'll > rebuild CentOS 5.5 on it, but I want to leave some free space for > whatever comes up and also dual-boot Vector Linux. Which, at last, > brings me to the question... > > Is there any reason to use LVM on a personal desktop install of > CentOS? It seems to me, for my purposes, that LVM is just a pain in > the neck -- although I've always just let CentOS set it up during the > install in the past. I would like to be able to use parted to resize > partitions when I want to, and also I'd like Vector Linux to be able > to read and write data to the CentOS partition. Would I be missing > something by not installing LVM, or is this mostly for server purposes > anyhow? LVM has a number of useful features and advantages. The 'default' RedHat/CentOS LVM setup (basically creating one LVM volume taking up all available space for the root file system), is pretty useless. With modern *large* disks. LVM (if set up properly) allows creating and/or resizing logical disks without having to shutdown and/or rebooting the system. This is often usefull for installing virtual processes (eg with xen). > > Thanks for any pointers. > -- Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar! Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database heller at deepsoft.com -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk