>>> On 11/26/2009 at 12:53 PM, Scott Rohling <[email protected]> wrote: > I know we've had this discussion before.. but.. I fail to understand why > everyone seems to find LVM reliable for everything BUT /. I'm promised it > will certainly fail - it's just a matter of time. Why?? Why does the > reliability of LVM suddenly break down when you talk about a particular > filesystem? I find it illogical.
It's not illogical at all. People are people and they make mistakes. When all your configuration information is locked away in an inaccessible LV, it makes recovery very much harder than it would be otherwise. It's not that LVM itself is particularly unreliable (although like any software it has it's bugs), it's the people involved. And I'm not just talking about the system administrator. There's also the storage admin, the fabric admin, the storage CE, the person that accidentally tweaked the wrong fiber connector in the switch, you name it. When you've supported nearly a thousand physical servers, these lessons get burned into your memory. > The few times I've experienced issues with / being an LVM are the very same > issues I have with any other filesystem under an LVM .. missing disks, > changed uuids, etc. Exactly. But when you went to fix the problem, was /etc/ available? Probably. > I'm not especially advocating using LVM for / - although I find it has some > advantages. Given the file system layout I use, I see no advantages at all, only disadvantages. > I'm just asking why it's reliability is so much in question. It's not in question, particularly. > What is there about / that makes LVM 'sure to fail'? I say humbug to > that.. See above. It's the people involved. (And sometimes just Murphy/Cosmic radiation/whatever.) Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
