Install logical volumes (LVM)

Prepare and install volumes

Prepare a single disk or a disk raid:

mkfs.ext3 <phsvol>
lvm
lvm> pvcreate <physvol>
lvm> vgcreate <physvol> // or several physical volumes: <physvol1> <physvol2> <physvol3>
lvm> lvcreate <volgroup> <physical>
lvm> quit
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/<volgroup-logvol>
mount /dev/mapper/<volgroup-logvol> <dir>

Auto-mount during boot:

vim /etc/fstab
/dev/mapper/<volgroup-logvol> <dir> ext3 noatime,user_xattr 0 0

Install LVM manually

If you need to install LVM after having setup the base system, note that there is a bug in Edgy and Feisty where the executable files will not be found. To fix it, execute the 2nd instruction below:

apt-get install lvm2
ln -s /lib/lvm-200 /lib/lvm-0

Install LVM volumes

  1. lvm > pvcreate /dev/sde1 > pvcreate /dev/md2
  2. lvm > vgcreate vg_backup /dev/sde1 > vgcreate vg_data /dev/md2
  3. lvm > vgdisplay vg_backup to check ### of free extents (following steps same for vg_data, but 2 logical volumes)
  4. lvm > lvcreate -l### vg_backup (do not use -LxxGB, use size with -l### which is number of extents)
  5. lvm > lvrename vg_backup lvol0 lv_backup
  6. lvm > vgcfgbackup to backup volume group configurations
  7. lvm > exit
  8. umount /home > umount /srv
  9. mkfs -t ext3 /dev/vg_backup/lv_backup > mkfs -t ext3 /dev/vg_data/lv_home > mkfs -t ext3 /dev/vg_data/lv_srv
  10. mkdir /backup
  11. mount /dev/vg_backup/lv_backup /backup > mount /dev/vg_data/lv_home /home > mount /dev/vg_data/lv_srv /srv

Check wether all volumes get mounted during system boot

For whatever reason, my swap volume which resides on raid1 was not mounted during system boot. After some searching I found that the uuid where not matching between /dev/disk/by-uuid and /etc/fstab.

to check wether root and swap are mounted, enter:

mount
free -m -t

to check mismatching uuid's, enter:

ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid
cat /etc/fstab

to fix, do:

vim /etc/fstab

replace the uuid's found in fstab with the ones found in /dev/disk. Make sure you copy the correct uuid (md0, md1) to the respective entry in fstab.

Copy content of entire partition

rsync -avH /backup /mnt/new_backup/