Hi,
I want to move over from Redhat 9.0 to Scientific Linux 5.0, (2.6.18-8.1.3.el5) on my laptop and desktop, but I am having some problems which essentially seem to be linked to access to harddrive or media devices, given the logical volume management (LVM). (Also, I am not too technical, and just want my machine to work without destroying information!)


Q1) How do I resize an LVM logical partition? and its underlying file system?
I have a logical volume on my harddrive, which I want ot reduce in size so as to make room for a new vfat partition. Unfortunately, the logical volume (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00), which contains the operating system, must be unmounted before I can use the graphical lvm facility on it! Using the SL 5.0 rescue CD, I decide to reduce it manually, after browsing the RedHat's Cluster_Logical Volume Management document. Commands given are [roughly]:

   sh-3.1# lvm
   lvm> lvscan
     inactive          '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00' [70.16 GB] inherit
     inactive          '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01' [1.94 GB] inherit
   lvm> lvchange -aly /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
   lvm> lvscan
     ACTIVE            '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00' [70.16 GB] inherit
     inactive          '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01' [1.94 GB] inherit
   lvm> lvreduce --size -10G -r /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
     fsadm: execlp failed: No such file or directory
     fsadm failed: 2
   lvm>

The problem seems to be deficulties in resizing file systems (from the -r flag to lvreduce).


Q2) How do I *manually* mount the Linux LVM file?
From the rescue CD, the 'conventional' commands do not work, presumably because of wrong file type:

   # mount -text3 /dev/mapper/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/anchor
   # mount -text3 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/anchor
   # mount -text3 VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/anchor
   # mount -text3 /dev/sda6 /mnt/anchor        # physical partition is sda6.


Q3) How do I perform a file system check with LVM partitions?
I suspect I have a disk crash/bad sectors on my desktop but do not want to loose information. fsck does not work, presumably because of wrong file type, since I have to unmount the partition!


Q4) How can you control where you mount devices automatically  (e.g., flash sticks)?
The mountpoints are not indicated in /etc/fstab, and the config files (*.conf) of automount and autofs do not seem to tell me where! In short I do not understand how these or the hal (hardware abstraction layer) work!


Thanks in advance,

William




       
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