Two disk install - System Status only shows one disk

[kwatson703]

Just a question for my peace of mind - I have a two-disk install, made with the procedure posted here: http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki.....install.* Both disks are 2TB hard drives.* The system is working great as far as I can tell (logging in via PuTTy, pvdisplay and vgdisplay show both volumes, and the volume group mounts just fine.* However, when I check on usage via the GUI System Status tool, it only shows one volume.* Here's the pertinent line:

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/storage* ext4* /dev/mapper/StorageVM-lv_storage* 14% (5%)* 1486.08GB* 254.54 GB* 1833.77 GB


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My question is whether I'm actually using both volumes, and whether there is a way to check status on both from the GUI.

[markdan]

Not sure if I understand what you are looking to see reported here.

are you saying that you are not seeing the root filesystem volume?

in the status screen you should see "/" mounted similar to-

/ ** *ext4 ** */dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root

that is your second volume. Maybe you are expecting something else

from this type of setup? Normally this install is done to keep the OS

and it's applications separate from the /storage partition where the

media files are kept (movies/music/pictures etc). This allows you some

flexibility with regards to the device(s) used for the storage area so that

the user can possibly expand the area in the future or perform other changes

that you would not want to do if the drive contained the OS also. By keeping

the OS on a separate drive it can be installed to a relatively smaller device

such as an ssd to take advantage of the better performance provided to

improve things like reboot time.

With two 2T drives I'm not sure what your goal is by separating the install.

It will still run just fine but unless I'm missing something you are wasting

a lot of storage space on the first drive by relegating it to strictly an OS

device where the actual OS will only take up a fraction of the 2T available.

With two 2T drives I'd be tempted to get a third small ssd (around 30G)

install the OS to that and concatenating the two large drives together to

provide a ~4T /storage area volume.

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-Mark D.

[kwatson703]

@markdan,

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Thanks for the prompt reply.


Normally this install is done to keep the OS

and it's applications separate from the /storage partition where the

media files are kept (movies/music/pictures etc). This allows you some

flexibility with regards to the device(s) used for the storage area so that

the user can possibly expand the area in the future or perform other changes

that you would not want to do if the drive contained the OS also.


This is exactly what I was trying to do, but I think I see my error now.* I thought by creating a volume group it would split /storage across both drives (kind of like striping in a RAID 0 setup) so that I could take advantage of almost all the 4TB storage I have.* I didn't know the OS had to be on a separate drive entirely.

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With two 2T drives I'd be tempted to get a third small ssd (around 30G)

install the OS to that and concatenating the two large drives together to

provide a ~4T /storage area volume.


So if I get a small SSD is there a way to move my OS there and do as you advise (concatenate the remaining two drives), without wiping out all the data I have in /storage now?

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I'm relatively inexperienced with this, but comfortable with the terminal and willing to learn.

[markdan]

Yes you can add the second 2T drive to the first in the storage volume

you created and mount it to a new install on a small ssd.

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#1 - make sure you have good backups!*

then do the following steps

-perform the install to the small disk (using the"

[kwatson703]

@Mark,

Thank you so much! This is why I love VortexBox and this forum. Great help without the snarkiness of other Linux community forums (and I've been a Linux user for several years now).

I've ordered an SSD and am looking forward to setting it up the way I should have in the beginning. I'll report success when I have that done.

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And, lest I forget, VortexBox "just works" amazingly - fabulous product!

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Ken
(Everyone was a n00b once.)

[kwatson703]

Just got around to doing this, and it went perfectly!* Thanks again!

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Happy Holidays to the VortexBox team and families,

Ken

[markdan]

Hi Ken,

glad that worked for you.

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In case this proves usefull to other folks I just added a new wiki page

with the steps for expanding /storage after using the steps listed in

my earlier "twodiskinstall" wiki page-

http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki.....eExpansion

*

-Mark D.

[hifihere]

Great stuff, thanks!