[ale] to lvm or not lvm is my dillema

[jc.lightner at comcast.net]

No.   If you increase physical RAM you often want to add SWAP devices. 

Having all your directories in a single partition instead of separate
filesystems can cause issues down the road.   For years I've made it a point
to have /boot, /root, /var and /usr separate because NOT doing so caused
major issues.   Usually I'll have sub-mounted filesystems as well for things
I expect to use a fair amount of space.   Having /root fill causing all
sorts of issues that take a lot of effort to recover from (sometimes
requiring a reinstall).    

Odd and unexpected issues can crop up.    Many things like to write into
/var/spool for example.   I've seen issues with that running out of space
when large email queues get clogged up.   Another fun thing I once ran into
was when logs said we were out of "space" on /var but df and other tools
indicated it had free "space".  It turned out that printing operations (this
was a print server) had eaten up all the inodes so the "space" wasn't
MB/GB/TB - it was lack of inodes.   For most filesystems you can't increase
inode allocation after original layout.   If you have LVM in place you can
create a new filesystem and migrate salvageable files to that.



-----Original Message-----
From: Ale <ale-bounces at ale.org> On Behalf Of Steve Litt via Ale
Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 2:41 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Cc: Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>
Subject: Re: [ale] to lvm or not lvm is my dillema


On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 14:02:37 -0500
Jeff Lightner via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> +1
> 
> LVM makes life so much simpler when one runs into any kind of storage 
> allocation issue whether on a single drive or on a major disk array.

Would life be even simpler than that if your entire disk contained only a
swap partition and a root partition and didn't bother with LVM?

SteveT

Steve Litt
Featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

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