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3 Answers

Post-installation disk/Partition management (LVM) – Debian 6/Win 7 dual boot.

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Debian, Disk Partition, Dual-booting, General

Hi,

I’m new to Linux. Followed the article on dual booting Debian 6 with Win 7. Really like your tutorials – crystal clear for newbies.

Background:

On page 4 of the article at:

http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/02/17/how-to-dual-boot-debian-6-and-windows-7/4/

in the 7th image from top, the final disk partitions are shown. There we have partition #6 (114.4 GB, LVM). I have a similar partition too. This partition shows up as “System Reserved” when I boot into Debian (It does not show when I boot into Windows). Accessing the drive requires the root password (no problem there). The contents of the drive are: 2 folders named “System Volume Information” & “Boot” and two files “bootmgr” and “BOOTSECT.BAK.

The information about this drive, as shown by GParted says :Status – Not mounted & a warning “Logical Volume Management is not yet supported”.

Questions:

a) What does this mean?

b) Is there a way to expand the “home” partition to use the space available in the partition #6?

c) What’s the advantage of having this partition exist separately instead of making all the space available to the “home” partition? I mean, what is the rationale behind assigning 20 GB to the “home” partition in the tutorial?

Thanks.

 

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3 Answers



  1. wolverine_tech on Sep 05, 2011

    finid,

    Thank you so much for the info and the explanation. Using system-config-lvm package, I resized the home partition to add 5 GB to it.

    Request: A tutorial for installing Windows with Linux (Linux installed first) using GRUB as the bootloader + tips on how to reinstall GRUB in case Windows does not play nice after upgrades… I’ve reloaded grub with live CDs (friends have also recommended the resources at http://www.supergrubdisk.org/) …. While there are tutorials that explain these, none have the combination of comments & screenshots like yours do.

    So far, I’ve used your tutorials to install & dual boot several OSs (Fedora, Debian, Mint, OpenSUSE to name a few) with Win 7. Your articles & tutorials are amazing – clear, concise & have worked perfectly.

    Very grateful.

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  2. finid on Sep 05, 2011

    Please refer to http://linuxbsdos.com/ask/2011/05/increasing-the-partition-size-online-with-lvm-using-ubuntu-11-04/ for how to grow a logical volume.

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  3. finid on Sep 05, 2011

    a) Review from image 4 (from top) of page 2 to most of the images on page 3 to see how that partition was created. You may also want to read the articles at http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2008/11/17/linux-logical-volume-manager/ for an introduction to LVM.

    In LVM parlance, partition #6 is a Physical Volume, which is a disk or disk partition that has been initialized (marked) for use by LVM. Do not mess with it.

    c) This partition, the Physical Volume, has to be created before you can create the logical volumes, where the actual installation of the system will take place.

    b) The disk space assigned to /home in the tutorial is just an example. I could have assigned all the available space not assigned to / and Swap to /home. But the rule of thumb when setting up LVM is to assign just enough disk space to the logical volumes and leave the rest free space for use in expanding any Logical Volume that needs it.

    So, yes, you can expand /home (the actual terminology is “grow” or “resize”) or any other existing logical volume. You can also create new logical volumes, if there is a need.

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