Fedora Partitioning Help

[Ryu-ka]

I'm trying to resize my Fedora filesystem partition using the F10 install DVD, but when I attempt edit it, I get an error saying "You cannot edit this partition: This partition is part of the LVM volume group 'VolGroup00'". If I try to use Gnome Partition Editor to modify it, the filesystem is identified as "Unknown" and I can only delete it. fdisk is my last resort, and I'm afraid to mess with it. The filesystem type is "LVM PV". Help anyone?

[Alessandro17]

I have never used LVM.

If anything can help you that is Parted Magic:

 

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05778

 

Maybe a recent openSUSE DVD could help you, but I suppose downloading an entire DVD is a bit too much.

 

See also:

 

http://linuxbsdos.com/2008/09/29/how-linux...and-manage-lvm/

 

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/

[Ryu-ka]

Strange, because I always thought Linux installed to ext3 as the primary filesystem.

[Alessandro17]

Strange, because I always thought Linux installed to ext3 as the primary filesystem.

 

Do you mean primary or default?

 

Only Fedora used ext3 as the default file system (now they use ext4).

Other distros offered a choice.

OpenSUSE used to offer reiserfs as the default, then ext3 and now ext4 (because reiserfs is unmaintained, but I keep using it).

There are other file system that according to many are just as good or even better.

[Ranguvar]

(because reiserfs is unmaintained, but I keep using it).

 

ReiserFS isn't unmaintained

It's not as well maintained as the kernel hackers would like, but it is maintained.

 

Here's Linus's Gitweb tree doing a history of the fs/resierfs/ folder:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/...eiserfs;hb=HEAD

[Alessandro17]

ReiserFS isn't unmaintained

It's not as well maintained as the kernel hackers would like, but it is maintained.

 

I agree!

 

I should have said: "they say that ReiserFS is unmaintained".

 

But personally I find it better, more stable and reliable than ext3 and a lot more stable than ext4.

[srs5694]

I'm trying to resize my Fedora filesystem partition using the F10 install DVD, but when I attempt edit it, I get an error saying "You cannot edit this partition: This partition is part of the LVM volume group 'VolGroup00'". If I try to use Gnome Partition Editor to modify it, the filesystem is identified as "Unknown" and I can only delete it. fdisk is my last resort, and I'm afraid to mess with it. The filesystem type is "LVM PV". Help anyone?

 

It seems that you've installed Linux using a Logical Volume Management (LVM) configuration. This is an advanced configuration that can make creating, deleting, and resizing Linux filesystems easier on an all-Linux system, but it does complicate moving space around between Linux and non-Linux OSes.

 

A key question that will determine how you should proceed is: Are you trying to resize the Linux filesystem (say, because it's too small) or the partition on which it resides (say, to make room for another OS)? Since you're using LVM, resizing the filesystem should be done with a combination of LVM tools (such as lvextend or lvresize) and a filesystem-resizing tool (such as resize2fs or resize_reiserfs). If you want to increase the size of a filesystem in an LVM configuration, you may need to make room for it by shrinking another filesystem or by adding space to your LVM, and either of those operations will require performing additional steps. Note that if you want to increase the size of your Linux filesystem, you don't have room in your LVM, and you've already cleared space in another partition, you can do this by adding the cleared partition to the volume group via the pvcreate and vgextend commands. You can then extend the size of the filesystem you want to resize.

 

If you want to shrink the LVM partition to make room for something else, you'll need to first ensure there's enough free space in the volume group to support shrinking the partition. This may require shrinking one or more contained filesystems. You can then use the pvresize command to shrink it. I suspect you'll then need to use fdisk (or gdisk, if it's a GPT disk) to delete and re-create the partition at the correct size. Running pvresize again to ensure it fills the partition might then be in order. This is a potentially error-prone procedure, so be sure you understand it thoroughly before you attempt it. A mistake could cause data loss that would be difficult to correct -- and by "difficult" I mean "requiring expertise that can be marketed at a rate of hundreds of dollars an hour."