<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What is LVM?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="LVM HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Contributors" HREF="contributors.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="What is Logical Volume Management?" HREF="whatisvolman.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="chapter" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >LVM HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="contributors.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="whatisvolman.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="chapter" ><H1 ><A NAME="whatislvm" ></A >Chapter 1. What is LVM?</H1 ><P > LVM is a Logical Volume Manager for the Linux operating system. There are now two version of LVM for Linux: <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > LVM 2 - The latest and greatest version of LVM for Linux. </P ><P > LVM 2 is almost completely backward compatible with volumes created with LVM 1. The exception to this is snapshots (You must remove snapshot volumes before upgrading to LVM 2) </P ><P > LVM 2 uses the device mapper kernel driver. Device mapper support is in the 2.6 kernel tree and there are patches available for current 2.4 kernels. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > LVM 1 - The version that is in the 2.4 series kernel, </P ><P > LVM 1 is a mature product that has been considered stable for a couple of years. The kernel driver for LVM 1 is included in the 2.4 series kernels, but this does not mean that your 2.4.x kernel is up to date with the latest version of LVM. Look at the <A HREF="ftp://ftp.sistina.com/pub/LVM/1.0/README" TARGET="_top" >README</A > for the latest information about which kernels have the current code in them. </P ></LI ></UL > </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="contributors.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="whatisvolman.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Contributors</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >What is Logical Volume Management?</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >