If you are placing a logical volume on a hard drive, it is useful to create a partition with type 8e (Linux LVM). This is not required; you can use the raw disk (e.g., /dev/sdi instead of /dev/sdi1). I believe that it makes the management of the disks easier because you can easily see with fdisk -l what disks are part of an LVM. Of course, you must create an LVM partition if you plan to put other partitions on the same disk (for example the boot partition or swap space).
fdisk -l /dev/sdi Disk /dev/sdi: 2199.0 GB, 2199014866944 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267348 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdi1 1 267348 2147472778+ 8e Linux LVM
Special devices (such as the network block device or RAID devices) do not support partitioning. In those cases, just use the raw device. In fact, using the LVM is the only way to separate the space on these devices.
Each physical device/partition must be prepared with pvcreate. The following all ready a given device (or multiple devices).
pvcreate /dev/nbd0
pvcreate /dev/nbd{0..6}
pvcreate /dev/hda8
pvcreate /dev/md1
vgcreate netdisk /dev/nbd{0..6}
lvcreate -n netdisk15 -l 73274 netdisk
mkfs.ext3 -j -L netdisk15 -i 524288 -m 0 /dev/netdisk/netdisk15
vgextend netdisk /dev/nbd1
Specify the size as the new total size, or use plus to specify how much to add.
vgextend -l +73274 /dev/netdisk/netdisk15
You can now extend the size of the ext3 partition. First umount it and check it (required).
e2fsck -f /dev/netdisk/netdisk15 resize2fs /dev/netdisk/netdisk15
To enable a volume and mount it.
vgchange -a y netdisk15 mount LABEL=netdisk15 /disk
To deactivate a volume.
umount /disk vgchange -a n netdisk15