Logical Volume Management (LVM)

The dilemma in partitioning has always been how large to make each partition (also known as a volume). Too often, you just accept a default, or make a wild guess about how much space you'll need for the data you plan to put on your partition. One day, you'll find yourself painfully short of space on one volume, while having a ton of room on another. Wouldn't it be great to have some space that you could allocate on-the-fly, even while a partition was already mounted? Logical Volume Management is a relatively new technology that allows you to use disk space from multiple drives in a single logical volume.

The LVM module in YaST is located under the System page. When you open it the first time, it asks you to create a Volume group. It's best to accept the default and create a System group, but allocate as much space as you want for your Volume group.

A Volume group identifies the Physical Volumes (PVs) on your system. These are the building blocks for your Logical Volumes (LVs). To create a new LV, click Add under the logical volume pane. You will need to specify a size and a file system (like ReiserFS). Click Finish to mount the new volumes.

When it's time to resize your LVs, return to this module. Select the volume you want to shrink and click Edit. Make this volume smaller, and then select the volume you want to expand. Edit it.

LVM works on any Linux file system and can also be used to create more swap space.

With this in mind, let's discuss how you find files within your file system.