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I kindly disagree that "LVM is not for your home PC." You actually never know when you might need more space. The LVM subsystem provides an elegant(!) way to address that problem – as well as a way to rid yourself of a drive which ("*click* *click* !! *click* *click* !!") might be beginning to fail. And, it basically doesn't cost you anything – even if you never actually have need to use it. I always select this option when installing everything, and never think twice about doing so.
We all are entitled to our own opinions.
LVM has a definite use, and is also very easy to use.
It is flexible and robust so home use is just as simple as any other location.
In fact, with the currently available drive sizes (both SSD and HDD) a user is forced to 1) over provision file system partitions in anticipation of growth, 2) shutdown and manipulate partition sizes when a critical partition fills up, or 3) use LVM or similar to provide the ability to manage file system sizes on the fly without interrupting operations. This applies to those with systems at home as well as large enterprise servers.
You may voice what ever choices you prefer, but I have used LVM on a raid array for many years (at home) and have never encountered a problem that forced loss of data or time. Even with loss of 2 different HDDs in about 7 years span.
Please feel free to suggest an alternate means of managing file systems and drives which provides the same ease, flexibility, and reliability as LVM.
Note that I do not disagree about the potential risk of data loss that multiplies as the number of devices involved increase when used in JBOD arrangement. (this is also the problem with using raid 0). However, using a actual raid array (raid 5 or 6 is what I prefer) beneath the LVM mitigates that risk almost 100%
We all are entitled to our own opinions.
LVM has a definite use, and is also very easy to use.
It is flexible and robust so home use is just as simple as any other location.
In fact, with the currently available drive sizes (both SSD and HDD) a user is forced to 1) over provision file system partitions in anticipation of growth, 2) shutdown and manipulate partition sizes when a critical partition fills up, or 3) use LVM or similar to provide the ability to manage file system sizes on the fly without interrupting operations. This applies to those with systems at home as well as large enterprise servers.
You may voice what ever choices you prefer, but I have used LVM on a raid array for many years (at home) and have never encountered a problem that forced loss of data or time. Even with loss of 2 different HDDs in about 7 years span.
Please feel free to suggest an alternate means of managing file systems and drives which provides the same ease, flexibility, and reliability as LVM.
Note that I do not disagree about the potential risk of data loss that multiplies as the number of devices involved increase when used in JBOD arrangement. (this is also the problem with using raid 0). However, using a actual raid array (raid 5 or 6 is what I prefer) beneath the LVM mitigates that risk almost 100%
You know it is something like use ASERASERF because it is flexible, robust, smells good or can say tramway very well.
I don't care all about that, I just don't need that.
Usually if a partition is full I buy another disk (obviously newer, faster, bigger and can say earthquake too), move my old partition completely to the new device, and over. I don't need to do anything else with it. Additionally I don't want to use the old and slow device any more, therefore extending its partitions does not solve anything.
Having spare space on my disks to be able to manage file system sizes is ok for me. Also there is no need to use raid. OS can be reinstalled in an hour, everything important is backed up into another storage, so I can recover anything any time.
There was only one issue in my life with spinning disks, one of them went into deadlock and stopped to work. Anyway, I don't use old disks.
Please feel free to suggest an alternate means of managing file systems and drives which provides the same ease, flexibility, and reliability as LVM.
There is a way which is way more simple, efficient and reliable: you don't. There is no need to fiddle with filesystems, you create a create single one which spans the whole array and that's that. YAGNI. And even if you do, loop devices.
There is a way which is way more simple, efficient and reliable: you don't. There is no need to fiddle with filesystems, you create a create single one which spans the whole array and that's that. YAGNI. And even if you do, loop devices.
For some things that will suffice.
For others there are better options.
If you need maximum performance I find a large RAID 5 array using MDADM and LVM with EXT4 file systems tests fastest for database operations.
For my personal laptop use I prefer BTRFS without RAID or LVM, performance is not as important and BTRFS is more than good enough.
It all depends upon your needs, operation, and available resources. There is no single "right" answer.
If you identify a single WRONG answer you would have to justify that decision and explain what makes it "wrong". I am not seeing that here.
For my personal use ext4 works well for me. Easy to maintain. No need for LVM in any 'my' home systems (desktops/laptops/server/RPIs). Disk space is cheap, so no need to extend/resize etc. Good backups of data is all that is necessary. As said above, there is no 'right' answer for 'everyone'. Each has own set of criteria.
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