Differences between LVM1 and LVM2

Hi.

I have been using LVM for about a year now at a number of machines. One I have had in production for about 4 months I think. I have never had any problems with this piece of software .. very stable.

I would like to know what to think about when upgrading to LVM release 2

Best regards
/Tomas

LVM2 is metadata and command line compatible to LVM1 plus it adds some nice features such as a configuration file with various sections for device name filtering and more.
You have the choice with it to upgrade your metadata to a more redundant format2 which causes updates to the metadata to be transaction oriented therefore enhancing the online recoverablilty of the LVM system.

We still declare LVM2 to be in Beta _because_ it misses the soon to be added feature to online relocate data (pvmove).

It is stable and you should give it a try :)

Regards,
Heinz    -- The LVM Guy --

*** Software bugs are stupid.
    Nevertheless it needs not so stupid people to solve them ***

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Heinz Mauelshagen                                 Sistina Software Inc.
Senior Consultant/Developer                       Am Sonnenhang 11
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[email protected]                           +49 2626 141200
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How about documentation? I still haven't seen any documentation that would really give me a change to _understand_ what's the relation between DM and LVM2 or how I should set up my system. Something similar to LVM-HOWTO, I mean.

Should I do most things just like I'm used to with LVM tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate and then just mount) or should I use dmsetup for something - and for what?

Oh, and now that I'm already writing this on the list, I might as well ask a few questiong about used and usable versions as well.

My laptop and my home-server are both running Debian Testing. Packages lvm2-1.95.10-2 andf dmsetup-0.96.04-2 and libdevmapper0-0.96.04-2 are available, both packaged by Andres Solomon. I guess I'd have to install these? Will these work with - for instance - kernels 2.4.20-rc1-ac4 and 2.5.47-ac6 or should I patch my kernels?

Suonp��...

DM is the kernel driver, LVM2 is a userland application that uses DM to set up the volumes.

You don't need dmsetup - think of dmsetup as an alternate (and very simple) volume manager that uses DM.

The packages you mention should work with those two kernels.

- Joe

Yes, they do seem to do exactly what I wanted. Thanks.

Suonp��...