new RHEL 4 machine

[John Abreau]

voluntaryMalloy, John wrote:
>  
> 
> I have inherited a new RHEL 4 machine.
> 
> It is running on an HP BL25p  (Blade)
> 
> Well, we are having trouble configuring the disks with LVM.  We are not 
> seeing all of  the 2 (72GB) drives.
> 
> Perhaps it was not setup correctly initially?
> 
> Also, since we do not have a RHN subscription for this, what is the best 
> way to update it?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> John Malloy
> 
> John.Malloy at pioneerinvestments.com

What do you mean when you say you're not seeing all of the two drives?
There are a number of possibilities that would be perfectly normal.

1. If the two 73G drives are mirrored, you'd see a single 72G volume,
not two volumes and not a 144G volume.

2. It's normal not to allocate all the space at once, so later you
can grow the filesystems as needed. E.g.

# vgdisplay

   --- Volume group ---
   VG Name               NeptuneVG
   System ID
   Format                lvm2
   Metadata Areas        1
   Metadata Sequence No  16
   VG Access             read/write
   VG Status             resizable
   MAX LV                0
   Cur LV                9
   Open LV               9
   Max PV                0
   Cur PV                1
   Act PV                1
   VG Size               68.28 GB
   PE Size               32.00 MB
   Total PE              2185
   Alloc PE / Size       881 / 27.53 GB
   Free  PE / Size       1304 / 40.75 GB
   VG UUID               Naut63-Nfjh-Hl12-Ci1F-Vyj2-WqeJ-7HI0Ba

Notice the line "Free  PE / Size       1304 / 40.75 GB".
On this system, there are currently 40.75 GB of unallocated space
in the LVM volume group, which can be added to any of the filesystems
as needed. If /var was running low and I wanted to increase it by 2G,

# lvextend --size +1G /dev/NeptuneVG/var
# ext2online /dev/NeptuneVG/var

The "lvextend" adds more space to the logical volume that /var uses,
and the "ext2online" expands teh ext3 filesystem to use the
additional space.


-- 
John Abreau
IT Manager
Zuken USA
238 Littleton Rd., Suite 100
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