This tutorial provides the steps to detect and configure a new Hard Drive for Logical Volume Manager (LVM) use.
These instructions are provided for a Linux system running Ubuntu 11.04. Some commands may differ between operating systems.
Prerequisites
Ubuntu may not include LVM support by default. You can verify this with:
$ lvm help
If this command fails you can install the necessary prerequisites with:
$ sudo apt-get install -y lvm2
Disk Detection
Your first step is to connect a new disk (or USB drive) to your server. You can easily tell what the operating system can see with:
$ cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name 8 0 1953514584 sda 8 1 2929688 sda1 8 2 2929688 sda2 8 3 1953125 sda3 8 4 4882813 sda4 8 5 292968750 sda5 8 6 15625000 sda6 8 80 1465138584 sdf
In this case, a new 1.5TB HDD was added, and this is seen in the last line as /dev/sdf. You can also see this detail using fdisk
$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 243202 1953514583+ ee GPT Disk /dev/sdf: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/sdf doesn't contain a valid partition table
Configuration LVM
$ cat /proc/partitions $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdf n p 1 +100G L 8e p w $ sudo pvdisplay $ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdf1 $ sudo pvdisplay $ sudo vgcreate db /dev/sdf1 $ sudo vgdisplay $ sudo vgscan $ sudo lvcreate --name p0 --size 20G db $ sudo lvcreate --name p1 --size 20G db $ sudo lvdisplay $ sudo lvscan $ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/db/p0 $ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/db/p1 $ sudo mkdir /mysql $ cat /etc/fstab $ sudo su - $ mkdir /mysql $ echo "/dev/db/p0 /mysql ext3 rw,noatime 0 0" >> /etc/fstab $ mount /mysql $ df -h
