Im not sure many people are familiar with acronis as it is rather expensive. However Acronis is not the root of the issue here. I need a way to essentially take all the data from inside an LVM and make just a normal non-LVM ext3 partition. Ive been considering grabbing all the files and putting them on an FTP server or the like, formatting to get rid of the LVM and just modifying the bootloader to look in a different at the new EXT3 drive instead. Will this work and If not anyone have a better solution?



-Thanks
--Thomas Curtis
---http://runwired.net
----"Dedicated to perfecting the ways computers work and communicate."

You don't describe your exact setup so it's hard to answer.

One thing to watch is to make sure that all permission and mode bits are preserved. Otherwise you'll have a lot of trouble when restoring. The best solution is usually to create a tar archive of your data, which you can then put anywhere (ftp server, external disk or another internal disk). Then you change the partitions from LVM to non-LVM.

Another point to watch is that if logical volumes are assigned in /etc/fstab, make sure you modify those to point to the actual physical devices as VGs/LVs will no longer exist.

If you post more detail, we can give a more precise answer.

I am in the process of setting up my 1st box to use LVM. What problems are you having that you want stop using it? Maybe I can save some heartache.

edit: have --> save (bad keyboard, bad keyboard)

first Of all LVM is great In the event that you may need to add more hard drive space and need it to be accessible as tho there was only one hard drive.

However For Acronis LVMs are not supported very well. I need to be pull all my data out of the LVM so I can transfer it into an EXT3 Partition. Now I could just load up and TAR the whole volume down and transfer it into the EXT3 partition. However if anyone knows of a better solution it would be greatly Appreciated.

What's wrong with the tar method? What constraints do you have?

As I said, you don't give enough information. For example, if both the LVM and the non-LVM partition are online at the same time, you could just mount them both (maybe from a LiveCD) and copy data over with "cp -r".

So please describe your setup in detail, otherwise you won't get the "perfect" answer.

If i TAR the contents of the LVM area and over write a fresh install (of CentOS with my desired partition structure) will it work? that is as basic and as specific as I can get.

Basically, yes. If you want to have exactly the same install, just without LVM, you shouldn't reinstall Centos.

From a LiveCD,
- create a tar of everything and store it elsewhere
- on this elsewhere, check that your tar is complete
- recreate your harddisk partitions (cfdisk, fdisk, parted) and your ext3 file systems (mkfs -t ext3)
- untar the previously created tar
- adjust /etc/fstab
- adjust /boot/grub/menu.lst and reinstall grub
- reboot
and you will drop into exactly the same installation, just without LVM.

I've done this before, it worked without a problem.

Now ive reinstalled grub before but it was in RH9 and that was several years ago.. what the exact command that i would use if grub was on /boot
just so Im sure...

Accidental post trying to edit, sorry.

I don't use grub, but I think it's "grub-install".