Formatting LVs for dom0 guests


Installing paravirtualized guests is interesting in the sense that you’re essentially copying over a minimal system, then telling it to install itself. Supposed to be fun. XD

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Now, after setting up the logical volumes for the domU guest, you have to setup the filesystem. Which isn’t as hard as it sounds, all the information I’ve found is similar, which should mean it’s fairly accepted.

The basic gist of it is you have to use mkfs.ext3 <LV location> (if you want ext3), followed by mkswap <LV swap location>.

So, I created a LV called debian and debian-swap to run a debian domU guest off of. (Wow. Such an imaginative naming scheme! =D)

For some reason, CentOS has all the LV locations in /dev/mapper. It’s probably different on some other distro, so you have to find out where yourself. But, this meant that my commands were mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/debian and mkswap /dev/mapper/debian–swap. (No, that double dash isn’t a typo.  I think a dash is a protected character, so LVM has to escape it.)

Also, upon redoing it, found out that CentOS also has individual LV volumes in /dev/<vgname>/<lvname>, not just /dev/mapper. Makes more sense I think. And more convenient too.

(As a side note, the Debian guidelines include the command swapon <LV swap location>. I don’t believe that this is necessary, but who knows. I have yet to successfully install any domU guests.)

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