[colug-432] go pratitionless

[Rick Troth]

On 01/28/2014 08:17 AM, Richard Hornsby wrote:
> Try LVM.  At first it is more complex and daunting than fdisk and physical partitions, but once you get the hang of it you'll find it much more flexible and easier to work with.

Exactly!
Wish I had thought to mention LVM.

LVM is a grown up version of partitioning. The only reason to partition
is certain bootstrapping issues, specifically how GRUB re-numbers the
partitions (which may be fixable) and unknown requirements from UEFI. My
main servers boot from a partitioned disk (because I left GRUB as-is)
and then use LVM for the serious work. The PVs feeding LVM may be
partitions but are more often whole disks (unpartitioned).

> For desktops, one large filesystem (aka partition in physical terms) might work okay.  Not sure it is a great idea in that situation, but is generally considered a pretty bad idea for servers.  In a one filesystem/partition setup, filling up /tmp or /home also causes there to be no space available for the system to write to /var (or /tmp), which in turn can crash processes and possibly bring down the box, but at the very least leave it in an unknown state.

One filesystem per "disk" does make sense in virtual machines. You can
then more easily reference that FS on the host, eg: with loop-back
mount, and not have to worry with offsets. Very handy!

This machine I'm writing from has the whole disk as a PV with
filesystems farmed out as LVs. I quite agree that a single FS is
sub-optimal for most physical systems. Except for VFAT, I've changed the
removable volumes to unpartitioned. None are PVs, but you can use a PV
on removable media. (No help from the automounter yet.)

> If you have separate filesystems, filling up /home doesn't break anything else.  Even filling up /tmp isn't as bad as when /var also runs out of space.

In a previous life, I worked with multipath devices via SAN. The paths
would be coalesced into one "device". We could then have applied
partitioning, but it wasn't worth the trouble. Instead, the coalesced
devices were made PVs and LVM did the rest.

-- R; <><