HOWTO : LVM gui (Not EVMS)

[crazymonkey]

This guide will show you how to install the Logical Volume Management gui from Fedora Core 8 rpm on your Ubuntu desktop. I prefer this gui over evmsgui because its alot more user friendly and gives you good information about your drives/volumes.

Before you begin here are some general note on LVM:
-For your system to work entirely on LVM you have to make a install using the alternate installation CD which will give you the option to install using LVM.

-If you have installed Ubuntu using LVM and you want to resize you root partition (or any system partition) you will have to boot using the Desktop live-cd and run the gui from there. You can grab both files attached to this post that contains everything needed to install and run system-config-lvm in a livecd session. Just extract the content, put it in the same folder as the .deb and run lvmgui-livecd-install.sh to get everything up and running.

****WARNING****
The GUI applies all settings instantly. Always be sure of what you do and double check before doing it. Its really easy to intialise the wrong drive and lose hours of work.

First of all we want to get the alien package to convert the rpm package to a .deb :

sudo apt-get install alien

Then we need the system-config-lvm rpm package from Fedora :

 wget download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/system-config-lvm-1.1.1-2.0.fc8.noarch.rpm

Next we will convert the .rpm package to .deb package (you will see alot of warning, you can ignore them) :

sudo alien system-config-lvm-1.1.1-2.0.fc8.noarch.rpm

Now we want to install our new deb package :
*For some reason alien changes the version number from 1.1.1-2 to 1.1.1-3 when creating the package

sudo dpkg -i system-config-lvm_1.1.1-3_all.deb

system-config-lvm needs the python interpreter and looks for it under the name /usr/bin/python2 but on Ubuntu 8.04 python is named /usr/bin/python2.5 so you need to create a link to python2.5 and name it python2

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/python2

Now if everything is alright you can start system-config-lvm (with sudo) and start managing your volumes.

sudo system-config-lvm &

On a final note here are the instruction to make the shortcut "Logical Volume Management" under System -> Administration work and lauch system-config-lvm properly.

1- Go to System -> Preference -> Main Menu
2- Find the "Logical Volume Management" and right click on it and open properties.
3- Change the command field to this: gksu system-config-lvm
4- Close everything and use your brand new shortcut!

****WARNING****
The GUI applies all settings instantly. Always be sure of what you do and double check before doing it. Its really easy to intialise the wrong drive and lose hours of work.

I hope this guide will help you.

EDIT: Changed system-config-lvm version from 1.0.18-1.2.FC5 to 1.1.1-2.0.FC8 and updated the whole guide to reflect this change, I also removed/updated the parts for Dapper to Hardy. I also added instruction to make the menu shortcut work and general notes on LVM.

[barret]

I like this a lot more than the LVM GUI on freshmeat. Thanks for the useful howto!

[mvanzante]

Just a suggestion because I'm a noob, but couldn't you use a symbolic link instead of copying the python files over. I used the following command, which worked wonderfully:

ln -s /usr/bin/python2.4 /usr/bin/python2

[zetman]

I want reudce the size of my root partition. Will I need to reduce the size of my file system first, or will the gui take care of that?

[jaffamuffin]

I want to know this too. I Performed a default install with Ubuntu with LVM and I want to put mythtv on(which is better setup over mulitple partitions), but use LVM and different filesystems.

Can I just use this tool to change set the disk up, and sort the filesystems out?

[crazymonkey]

I want reudce the size of my root partition. Will I need to reduce the size of my file system first, or will the gui take care of that?

First of all sorry for the late reply, i had problem with my internet the night i posted this HOWTO and tought it didnt make it to the forums...

If you installed ubuntu using the alternate install CD and chose to use LVM partition you can easily resize your root partition with this tool. Just select your Ubuntu volume group and select your root partition under the logical view and press the Edit Properties button.

This will open a new window (see screenshot) with your root partition properties. There you can change the size of your partition and free some space to assign to a new partition. On the screenshot it shows the size in extents but you can change it to KB,MB or GB too.

[johnhedge]

This was so much easier than EVMS which I just couldn't get to work! I now have a great partition spread over 3 hard drives.

Great 'Howto'.

One ? though. Where's the launch icon in the menu?

[crazymonkey]

This was so much easier than EVMS which I just couldn't get to work! I now have a great partition spread over 3 hard drives.

Great 'Howto'.

One ? though. Where's the launch icon in the menu?

The launch icon is added automatically in the others section. You will have to change the launcher to

gksu system-config-lvm

before using it.

[dernwine]

Thanks for the awesome info -
I've had system-config-lvm working fine with Gnome Ubuntu, however when I try the same steps with kde based kubuntu, I'm getting the following response. I did some searching and the best I can come up with is it has something to do with python (duh) but other than that, am at a loss... Any ideas?

@groucho:~$ sudo system-config-lvm
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/system-config-lvm", line 50, in ?
from Volume_Tab_View import Volume_Tab_View
File "/usr/share/system-config-lvm/Volume_Tab_View.py", line 13, in ?
from Properties_Renderer import Properties_Renderer
File "/usr/share/system-config-lvm/Properties_Renderer.py", line 33, in ?
import gnome
ImportError: No module named gnome

[jdong]

You probably need the gnome python bindings. Pull in gnome-app-install or alacarte or gdebi or some other gnome python app and that'll probably be your brain-dead simple way of getting any possible gnome dependencies... it's excessive but simple, just the way I like abusing modern-day hard drives and processors