When creating a new Centos basic server, I do the following:

• Select all space
• Review and modify partitioning layout
• Remove lv_home partition and put associated memory in root

Is this a mistake and should I leave lv_home in place?

Nothing wrong with that for a home desktop system. I've got some systems that use LVM and have a bazillion different mountpoints. Others, like my home desktop, are much simpler. If you have a large disk on your home desktop, there really is no need to do a bunch of partitioning and use LVM. Doesn't hurt, doesn't help. So make your choice. Sometimes simpler is better. Depends on your situation. Most one-user home desktop systems work perfectly well with "simpler".

I'm old school and never bothered to explore all the good things LVM can do. All of my home systems are set up with manual hard partitions. A /boot and / on the root disk. A /u on the second disk. If I need to I can mount the disks on another system and save the data. Or I can just drop them in and reboot another mobo. Oh, I forgot to mention I set up a swap on each disk equal to physical memory.

Basically, if you have to ask whether you need to partition or use LVM, then the answer is "No, you do not." In other words, if you can't describe why you want to, then you don't need to. Simple as that.

Thanks craigs21 and haertig,

I don't disagree, but whenever I go away from the "default" install, I thought I better ask.

Hi NotionCommotion,

Although this is for your own RnD, don't you think it would be nicer if you make it as if you're setting up for business purposes?
That's just my opinion so at least we can learn how to do a best practice in a lab environment.
At the end of the day, we're just preparing for the big day right?

This is what I normally do with my VM servers in my home lab:
The physical volume I normally give to each VM installation is around 22 GB.
boot partition has to be non-lvm partition
The rest goes to the physical volume.
for the volume group, I use up the rest of the space I have from the physical volume.
That's what I roughly do in each of my new VMs.
That just made sense for me in the long run if I want to re-size one of the mount point.
I hope this helps.

Cheers...

If it's for a "personal" server then unless there's a compelling reason not to I'd use the suggested / default partitioning scheme.

2 ways i have found best.
or if you will be filling up home & opt with stuff then you could...
- then log into single user mode, move /opt & /var to /home & create symlinks, dont forget to disable selinux.

It doesn't matter how the partitions are done or what type of file-system they are formatted with. If all you do is generic system administration or like writing programs/scripts and even running servers like apache and similar, it doesn't matter. A simple /boot and / are enough, and if you want to be little more creative, you can add /home.

It only matters, if disk and space management is part of your system administration or for whatever the nature of work you do. Like for example, software developers often mess up with OS/database/configs, so they need snapshot facility, which is provided by LVM, so they go for it. For large corporation, where data is of at-most important, they have lot of options like raids, lvms, zfs, xfs to name a few. If you want to get specialty in those areas, you can experiment with difference types of partitions, file-systems etc.

Why?


Why?


Until you explain why I disagree, especially for machines in a server role.


While you ask pertinent questions they do not quite link up with the "server" part in your thread title IMO. The difference between machines in a server or a desktop role is the first usually run unattended for prolonged periods of time and depending on their server role (should) require more forethought and different precautions when compared to "do whatever you want" desktops. (Example: if you've never experienced server failure due to "/var" contents filling up "/" then you do not know which precautions to take and why. To be clear: that's both a planning and a monitoring issue). Like RHEL CentOS recommends that, unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, you should at least create the following partitions: swap, /boot/, and / (root). I suggest you read the CentOS installation and admin documentation, especially the "Introduction to Disk Partitions", "Managing Disk Storage" and the notes in the "Advice on Partitions" sections.

That is a huge /boot partition. Why? 50Mb is probably OK for most folks, possibly 100Mb would be better if those folks don't know to delete the old kernels they aren't using anymore. You are a factor of 10x or 20x above that. What do you store in /boot that takes so much space?

Also, what is your reason for using ext3? I had some problems a while back related to MySQL and ext4, and ended up doing the same thing.