is LVM always used in Linux?
 

1. I'm reading a redhat9 book which mentions LVM. However, I type in "vgdisplay" and it says "no volume groups found".

2. When I tried to install fedora3, it automatically created:

LogVol00
LogVol01

and it also listed hard drives.

3. I have a screenshot from when I installed fedora2 once and it had a "LVM" button but only information about the "disk drives":
http://www.tanguay.at/images/simpleX...ePartition.jpg

4. So LVM seems to me to be something that is "sometimes used and sometimes not". I understand it to be a different way of partitioning the hard drive.

Can someone shed some light on how they use LVM for practical purposes, why I would use it, if it is always "in the background" etc.

Thanks.

tldp.org is a very useful site for everyone from newbies to advanced linux users. It provides HOWTOS, FAQs and GUIDES

Below is the HOWTO for LVM. LVM is too big a topic to explain in a single post. Read the HOWTO and then ask questions where ther is confusion.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...LVM-HOWTO.html

hope this helps.

You can consider a Linux LVM to be an equivalent of the Win2K Spanned Volume concept, wherein you are virtually never out of disk space