Hi all,

Just a quick question regarding partitions in Linux.

I'm currently running Fedora Core 4, with kernel 2.6.12-1.

I'm currently in the process of setting up a mythTV box and so assigned a large partition (i.e. /video) to store the recorded programs during the installation process.

Half way through my installation, I realised too late that I'd failed to create an LVM for this storage, so I can grow it at some later stage.

Is there any easy way (other than reinstalling) for me to remove the existing /video partition and convert the free space into an LVM physical volume?

Cheers,

Neowulf.

Yes and no, but it would be a lot easier to just copy it to a different drive and then bring it back when the LVM was set up. External USB drives work great for this type of transfer.

If the question is whether you can directly convert something like an ext3 partition into an LVM, then the answer is no, or at least, I am fairly sure it’s “no”.

Thanks for the advice.

After doing a little more research, I thought I could try the following...

1. Move the existing data from /video to another partition...
2. Unmount /video
3. Reformat the partition as an LVM Physcial volume
4. Create a new logical volume under the new LVMPV.
5. Format the new volume with JSF
6. Recreate the /video mount point
7. Move my data back onto it...

Hows that sound?

Neowulf.

That will work fine, but it didn't sound like you had any room available on the disk to do that. The idea is to get the data out of the way before you create the physical volume.

Regarding your proposed steps, you usually create a volume group before creating logical volumes (step “3b”).

pvcreate
vgcreate
lvcreate

Thanks for the advice, worked a treat.

Neowulf.