[linux-lvm] Restricted partitions?

[Bradley M Alexander]

On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 03:46:32PM +0100, Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
> Hi, Bradley!
> 
> Bradley M Alexander (storm at tux.org) wrote 50 lines:
> 
> > Are there any partitions/filesystems that should not be used without an
> > initrd besides /? Here is my partition list:
> 
> > /dev/hda1                 7746      3499      3847  48% /boot
> 
> This one might be a problem.  (think: growing it, and it might
> even end up on a different HD.)

Actually, that was not one that I was going to LVM.

> > I have two 30GB
> > drives, the secomd of which is empty, so I was going to put /var, /tmp,
> > /home, /usr/local, /opt, /mirror and /archive on a volgroup on the second
> > drive, then once it stabilized, create a second volgroup on /dev/hda from
> > the partitions that are now on the volgroup on hdb.
> 
> Why 2 volumegroups, why not one that grows by appending the
> (then free) space of /dev/hda?  

I thought it might be more efficient to have two than one that straddled
drives. 

> > I went in, using 1.0.1rc4 and kernel 2.4.13 and created the partitions on
> > the volume group on hdb. Ran lilo and changed fstab. Rebooted and it could
> > not mount the volumes, and gave me a "Can't locate module /dev/vg01" and
> > for each partition, it tries to load them as modules. The LVM code is
> > compiled into the kernel.
> 
> /dev/vg01 is your new volume group, right?  I _think_ devfs
> sees it accessed and tries to load the appropriate module
> (none, but it doesn't know).

Yes it is. Then further down in dmesg, it kept trying to load
/dev/vg01/lv_tmp, lv_archive and all of the other partitions as modules as
well.

> > At this point, I have two prime suspects. Either one of the partitions I am
> > trying to mount on the volume group should not be without an initrd (/tmp
> > or /var?)
> 
> Both are on LVM here -- and if my system really needs /tmp it
> can easily use /tmp -- which would be on / then ( /tmp is not mounted
> then).  The only problem will be that after mounting those
> you won't be able to access the files which are there, but on
> the root partition.  But then mounting is a very early step
> in the boot process, so that won't be a problem.
> 
> > or its a problematic interaction with devfs. 
> 
> That would be my guess.

I have tried asking this same question on two LUG lists, this list, the
debian and debian-devel irc channels, and thus far, no one has an answer.

-- 
--Brad
============================================================================
Bradley M. Alexander, CISSP              |   Co-Chairman,
Beowulf System Admin/Security Specialist |    NoVALUG/DCLUG Security SIG
Debian/GNU Linux Developer		 |   storm at debian.org
                                         |   storm at tux.org
============================================================================
Know guns, Know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.