[linux-lvm] Filesystem Encapsulation

[jamesp at hisser.org]

Hi All

I am running LVM on RHEL AS 3.0 (2.4.21 based kernel).

We have two filesystems like this:

Device     Size  Used  Avail
/dev/sda1  985G  604G  332G  65% /fs1
/dev/sdb1  591G   87G  474G  16% /fs2

They contain a number of ~2gig files that don't change once they are written -
they only get deleted after a certain amount of time.

I would like to use LVM to create a new VG containing /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 as
PVs, to be able to present a single larger filesystem to the O/S. Now I realise
this is trivial if you don't mind data loss,or are able to copy the data off
the filesystems temporarily.

What I would "like" to do is copy everything from /fs2 to /fs1 so that /fs2 is
empty. I could then pvcreate /dev/sda1 and place it into a  brand new VG while
PRESERVING the data, then extend the VG by adding a new PV (/dev/sdb1). Then of
course the LV and FS could be extended.

The sort of thing I am talking about it like disk encapsulation on Veritas VM.
Is this possible at all with linux-lvm ? If not - any plans for the future?

Thanks!

James