LVM2 For Linux

LVM2 is an open source userspace toolset that has been designed from the ground up to provide logical volume management capabilities on Linux-based operating systems, allowing you to create snapshots of your partitions, as well as to effortlessly resize them whenever you want, as you see fit.

Key features include the ability to resize volume groups, resize logical volumes, create read-only or read-write snapshots of logical volumes, create RAID logical volumes, move logical volumes between physical volumes, merge or split volume groups, as well as to stripe parts of or whole logical volumes across multiple physical volumes.

While LVM is a command-line application, it will easily integrate with any open source partition editor software, including the well known GParted project, allowing the user to easily create LVM partitions.

The LVM and LVM2 technologies are written entirely in the C programming language, they are command-line utilites and have been implemented over the years in many GNU/Linux operating systems, via their installers.

Both versions are available for download as source archives, deployable on any Linux distribution. However, bleeding edgers can grab the latest source code of LVM2 from Git using the following command: git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/git/lvm2.git.

Only three things are required to use LVM, the libdevmapper userspace device-mapper library, the userspace LVM2 tools and device-mapper support in your kernel. For detailed information about the userspace and device-mapper kernel components visit the http://sources.redhat.com/dm web page.

In conclusion, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a very powerful software project that enables Linux distribution developers to implement support for LVM partitions directly in the graphical or text-mode installer of their operating systems, allowing users to resize volumes or create snapshots with minimum effort.