This guide does make the assumption that you know your way around Linux and is based on a rather simplified setup (for the sake of clarity) that you will probably want to amend for your specific needs.
The instructions ought to work with little or no amendment for any recent flavour of Ubuntu including Edgy Eft and Dapper Drake. If you have problems following this guide then Google is your friend!
Boot from the CD into the live desktop.
Configure networking so that we can use aptitude to obtain the necessary LVM packages.
sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install lvm2 modprobe dm-mod cfdisk /dev/hda # or /dev/hdb, /dev/sda, /dev/cciss/c0d0, etc., throughout...
Write the partitions to disk something like the following:
hda1 ; Boot ; Primary ; Linux ext2 ; 200Mb # at beginning of drive for /boot hda2 ; ; Primary ; Linux swap ; 2048Mb # at end of drive hda3 ; ; Primary ; Linux LVM ; 120000Mb # in remaining space for root LV and other LVs
pvcreate /dev/hda3 # This may fail, see below for fix
At the time of writing there existed a bug in the packaged version of LVM that can be fixed with: ln -s /lib/lvm-200 /lib/lvm-0
vgcreate vg00 /dev/hda3 lvcreate -n root -L 10G vg00 # If this fails make sure that you have performed modprobe dm-mod
It is necessary to create filesystems on the devices in order for the ubiquity installer to correctly identify them as possible install targets.
mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda1 mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/vg00-root mkswap /dev/hda2
Proceed through the installation as normal, except choose to manually prepare the disks as follows:
/dev/hda1: use as: ext2 ; mount point: /boot ; format: yes /dev/hda2: use as: swap /dev/mapper/vg00-root: use as: ext3 ; mount point: / ; format: yes
Allow the install to complete and click "Continue using the live CD".
mount /dev/mapper/vg00-root /target mount /dev/hda1 /target/boot mount -t proc proc /target/proc mount -t sysfs sysfs /target/sys chroot /target aptitude update aptitude install lvm2 ln -s /lib/lvm-200 /lib/lvm-0 vgchange -ay # Tests that LVM works from within the target system
Add the following modules to both /etc/modules and /etc/initramfs-tools/modules:
dm-mod dm-snapshot dm-mirror
update-initramfs -u
Exit the chroot by pressing ctrl-d.
umount /target/proc /target/sys /target/boot /target
Reboot into your new "root on LVM" Ubuntu system.
