[mdlug] file copy

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2013-12-30 at 11:03 -0500, Carl T. Miller wrote:
> Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > On Mon, 2013-12-30 at 09:48 -0600, Bob wrote:
> >> The big question is, can I create a vol, add the 2tb drive to it WITH
> >> OUT losing any data, add the new 4tb drive and then move the vol 2tb >
> >> 4tb?
> > Absolutely, yes.  I do this all the time.
> Adam, enlighten me.  How do you do this?  I thought you had
> to run the pvcreate command to join a device to a volume
> group, and that the pvcreate would erase whatever former
> contents had been there.

I have cheated in the past.

Create a logical volume of the correct size of the current
non-volume/partition - actually it could be bigger, shouldn't hurt.

UNMOUNT the non-volume/partition.

dd if=/dev/NONVOLUME of=/dev/VGNAME/VOLUMENAME bs=512

mount /dev/VGNAME/VOLUMENAME /wherever

It should work.  Once it works you can discard whatever stupid
non-volumne unmanaged-partition you have.  Maybe recreate it as a PV and
just move the `new` logical volume back.

The filesystem is delightfully oblivious concerning its container.

If your target volume was bigger just run the filesystem's resize tool
and you should get the extra space [resize2fs for ext2/3/4].

Or better yet - just use volume management from the get-go.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam at whitemice.org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA