bram wrote:
I tossed FC4 when I discovered that it installs LVM by default. LVM is IMO worse than useless. I see no advantages for me, and I see problems (like yours, for example) looming in the future.
I would have to agree on this, for our servers we use freebsd because it does not have lvm and it's very easy to add drives etc. Would it not be a good idea to add a checkbox in the installer wich says yes automic partitioning but no lvm.
You can fiddle with the automatic partitioning choices in Anaconda, the last time I did it I recall I deleted the LVM line without deleting the ext3 stuff inside it, and with that one step it then was what I wanted, the ext3 part replaced the deleted LVM line without having to regenerate the ext3 part. So it is already pretty simple at install time IIRC to nuke LVM. Kickstart no doubt lets you automate that choice too.
LVM does have its uses binding really large storage arrays that are already raided. I made some large servers from 12 SATA drives like that. But I agree with both of you, I think you should have to select it at install time, not deselect it. I can see why people think they're doing a good deed there in the case someone adds another drive later, but they are also bringing pain into the world if you need to get down on the filesystem in a crisis, needless pain in the case of a laptop drive that will never be expanded with permanent storage. And even the good deed is questionable if the substrate was not raided to start with, the chance of destroying the entire filesystem increases with each drive you spread it over...
-Andy
