11.1. Setting up LVM on three SCSI disks

11.1.1. Preparing the disks

Before you can use a disk in a volume group you will have to prepare it:

	Warning!
	The following will destroy any data on /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, and /dev/sdc

Run pvcreate on the disks

# pvcreate /dev/sda # pvcreate /dev/sdb # pvcreate /dev/sdc

This creates a volume group descriptor area (VGDA) at the start of the disks.

11.1.2. Setup a Volume Group

1. Create a volume group

   # vgcreate my_volume_group /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc/

2. Run vgdisplay to verify volume group

   # vgdisplay # vgdisplay --- Volume Group --- VG Name my_volume_group VG Access read/write VG Status available/resizable VG # 1 MAX LV 256 Cur LV 0 Open LV 0 MAX LV Size 255.99 GB Max PV 256 Cur PV 3 Act PV 3 VG Size 1.45 GB PE Size 4 MB Total PE 372 Alloc PE / Size 0 / 0 Free PE / Size 372/ 1.45 GB VG UUID nP2PY5-5TOS-hLx0-FDu0-2a6N-f37x-0BME0Y

   The most important things to verify are that the first three items are correct and that the VG Size item is the proper size for the amount of space in all four of your disks.

11.1.3. Creating the Logical Volume

If the volume group looks correct, it is time to create a logical volume on top of the volume group.

You can make the logical volume any size you like. (It is similar to a partition on a non LVM setup.) For this example we will create just a single logical volume of size 1GB on the volume group. We will not use striping because it is not currently possible to add a disk to a stripe set after the logical volume is created.

# lvcreate -L1G -nmy_logical_volume my_volume_group lvcreate -- doing automatic backup of "my_volume_group" lvcreate -- logical volume "/dev/my_volume_group/my_logical_volume" successfully created

11.1.4. Create the File System

Create an ext2 file system on the logical volume

# mke2fs /dev/my_volume_group/my_logical_volume mke2fs 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 131072 inodes, 262144 blocks 13107 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 9 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16384 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

11.1.5. Test the File System

Mount the logical volume and check to make sure everything looks correct

# mount /dev/my_volume_group/my_logical_volume /mnt # df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 1311552 628824 616104 51% / /dev/my_volume_group/my_logical_volume 1040132 20 987276 0% /mnt

If everything worked properly, you should now have a logical volume with and ext2 file system mounted at /mnt.