Hi, may i know the difference between LVM and Standard. I am trying to install rocky linux and i got to the part where i need to select LVM or standard as my mount point.
Any advise which one i should select and what is the advantage over the other? thanks a lot.
LVM is more flexible, since it allows you to resize easier later. LVM stands for Logical Volume Management.
If you choose standard partitions, then the only partition that you will be able to resize is the last one on the disk. Therefore earlier partitions won’t be possible. WIth LVM you would normally have two partitions on the disk, the first being /boot, the second being for LVM. In LVM would be /, /home and swap perhaps others too. Each of these can be resized, since they are all contained within the second partition.
That’s pretty much it in a quick summary.
Additional note: the default filesystem is XFS and it is not possible to shrink XFS. One can make XFS larger, but not smaller. To “shrink” XFS requires backup data, remove filesystem, create smaller, and restore data.
It is technically possible to resize and move “standard partitions”, but one has to do that offline – when the installed OS (that does use the affected filesystems) is not running.
LVM supports online changes – one can do them without shutdown of the OS. One can even move a logical volume to a different physical drive on the fly and have volumes that are larger than single physical partition.
Either way, always do have backups.
hi iwalker, thanks a lot for the info. I have better understanding now about LVM
hi jlehtone, thanks for the additional info. I’m interested about the idea of moving logical volume to a different physical drive. I will do some research about it. Thanks again
Just look at the manpage for “pvmove”. It is a very powerful command.