Hi, I have read the how-to's relating to LVM installation on Slackware 11, but only want to extend the home directory for storage.

I have 3 sata harddrives;
1. 40GB Slackware installation plus home directory.
2. 160GB spare.
3. 80GB Apache and Samba repository for a home intranet.

I don't want to install from scratch. I don't have the time.

From what I can see, basically, I need to create a ram disk and copy the home directory to it, then create a partition /vg in the second drive and mount it.

Completely new to LVM, and a little hesitant to try it, as it has the potential to screw up your system if not done correctly.
Do I need to use LVM, is there another way to achieve the same result.


Thanks again.

oh yea man your doing it the WAY hard way. and yes if you get the steps out of order you are going to lose everything in your home.

what you could do is just make a new partition on that spare drive and then just mount it on /home also. So you will have 2 partitions on /home like if the original home is 20gb and you make the entire 160gb drive a new home you will have 180gb /home partition.

(assuming sda is your 40gb drive, sdb is your 160gb drive, and sdc is your 80gb drive):
1. you need to create a partition on your sdb drive
fdisk /dev/sdb
*to create a new partition hit "n"
*it will ask if you want a primary or secondary partition. probably hit "p"
*take the defaults to use the whole drive as 1 partition
*you can hit "v" to view your new partition
*hit "w" to save and exit

2. you need to create the filesystem in this partition (assuming you want an ext3 filesystem)
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

3. make a test mount point and mount the new partition. Test it. (This should give a warm fuzzy feeling)
mkdir /mount/test
mount /dev/sdb1 /mount/test
mkdir /mount/test/TESTDIR

4. if everything works so far. unmount the partition and remount it on /home
umount /mount/test
mount /dev/sdb1 /home

5. list /home and see if original home directories are there and the new TESTDIR
ls /home

6. if all is good. add an entry in /etc/fstab (So it will automount this partition everytime you boot)
/dev/sdb1 /home ext3 defaults 0 0


your done!!! no mess and you cant lose anything this way. Now both the sda and sdb partitions will be your /home and if you run out of room again you can do the samething and get a bigger home.

Thanks, I tried that. With /dev/sdb1 mounted on /home along with /dev/sda4, konqueror would not load my user directory window. I rebooted and was then unable to startx - it was looking for? I forget now - X11 session authority, I think, which is in my user directory in /home.
Unmounted and changed fstab to original and rebooted - all OK, but unable to mount both partitions on /home simultaneously.
I've had a look at the Similar Threads below for clues, but it's not very clear to me.
Thanks again.