[Fedora-xen] Slightly off-topic question about Xen+LVM

[Sam Folk-Williams]

Hi,

Aaron Metzger wrote:
> First let me say that I love the way virtualization has been integrated 
> into Fedora!  Thanks to all who have done this work.
> 
> I have a simple question which is a little off-topic but I know that the 
> experience is contained in this group of folks.
> 
> Using the final release of Fedora 8 plus all released patches, I created 
> an LVM volume group and an Ext3 logical volume upon which I am storing 
> all of my Xen virtual machine images as normal files.
> 
> I tried to use the system-config-lvm tool to create a snapshot of the 
> logical volume and assigned it to a mount point that I created under 
> "/mnt/vmbackups" and checked the box to have it mounted at boot time.
> 
> When I rebooted the machine, the boot failed when It tried to access the 
> snapshot logical volume.  I'm not going to include the specific errors 
> here because my question is much more general.
> 
> Do snapshots of logical volumes work under Fedora 8?  Google revealed 
> some historical discussions about snapshots not working in the 
> transition from LVM1 to LVM2.  Is that the case?  Is anyone successful 
> creating logical volume snapshots under Fedora 8?
> 

They definitely work. Thought there might be a better approach. For 
example, the simplest way is to make a separate LV for each quest. Then 
you make a snapshot of that LV to "clone" that guest, or to save it as a 
backup.

> Alternatively, is there any other reliable way to make a self-consistent 
> copy of a running Xen virtual machine image for the case where the Xen 
> virtual machine is held in a regular file system file?  Is LVM my only 
> option?

For a single file you can just copy the file... with, say, cp or dd.

-Sam
> 
> Thanks in advance for any and all help.
> 
> -- 
> Aaron
> 
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