Creating Soft Partitioning in Linux

Order :

1. Create an image file
2. Create a loopback device for the file
3. Run pvcreate on the loopback device
4. Run vgcreate on the "physical" volume
5. Run lvcreate on the volume group
6. Create a filesystem on the logical volume
7. Mount the logical volume

1) Create an image file
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#dd if=/dev/zero of=/FAW/vms/linux_vm/disk2.img bs=1 count=1024 seek=500G

2)Create a loopback device for the file
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#losetup -f /FAW/vms/linux_vm/disk2.img


# losetup -a
/dev/loop0: [fd01]:49160 (/FAW/vms/linux_vm/disk2.img)

3) Run pvcreate on the loopback device
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# pvcreate /dev/loop0 (initialise disk created)
Physical volume "/dev/loop0" successfully created

4)Run vgcreate on the "physical" volume
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#vgcreate xen-vm /dev/loop0
Volume group "xen-vm" successfully created

5) Run lvcreate on the volume group
============================
#lvcreate -L450G -nxen_prov xen-vm

Logical volume "xen_prov" created

6)Create a filesystem on the logical volume
===================================
#mkfs.ext3 /dev/xen-vm/xen_prov
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
58982400 inodes, 117964800 blocks
5898240 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
......................
.........................................


7) Mount the logical volume
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mount /dev/xen-vm/xen_prov /FMW/xen_vm