How to Create LVM Partition in Linux (Step by Step)

LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is the recommended way to manage disk or volume in Linux system. One of the major benefits of LVM partitions is that we can extend their size on the fly without any down time.

In this post, we will learn how to create LVM partition in linux step by step. For demonstration purpose, I have attached 10 GB disk to my Ubuntu system and will create lvm partition on it. Let’s deep dive into the steps.

Step 1)  Identity Disk and Create Physical Volume (PV)

Login to Linux system and look for newly attached disk or free disk. Run ‘sudo fdisk -l’ command

$ sudo fdisk -l

Output

As we can clearly see that we have a disk of 10 GB (/dev/sdb) which have no partition and available as raw disk. So, let’s create physical volume (pv) using following command.

Syntax:

$ sudo pvcreate  <disk1> <disk2> … <diskN>

$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb
Physical volume "/dev/sdb" successfully created.
$

Note:  In case pvcreate command is not available in Ubuntu system then install lvm2 package using following apt command.

$ sudo apt install lvm2 -y

Verify the PV status using following commands.

$ sudo pvscan
Or
$ sudo pvs
Or
$ sudo pvdisplay /dev/sdb

Output of above commands,

Step 2) Create Volume Group (VG)

Creating volume group (vg) means adding physical volume (pv) to vg. Run beneath command to create volume group,

Syntax:

$ sudo vgcreate  <vg_name>  <pv> <physical volume>

So, in our case, command would be

$ sudo vgcreate vg01 /dev/sdb
  Volume group "vg01" successfully created
$

Verify the volume group status using following commands,

$ sudo vgscan
Or
$ sudo vgs
Or
$ sudo vgdisplay vg01

Output

Above output confirm that volume group vg01 has been created successfully and size of each physical extent is 4 MB (this is the default size).

 Step 3) Create Logical volume (LV) from Volume Group (VG)

To create a logical volume (lv) from volume group (vg), use following command

Syntax:

$ sudo lvcreate -L <Size> -n <lv_name>  <vg_name>

In our case, I would be creating a lv of size 10 GB with name ‘lv01’.

$ sudo lvcreate -L 9.99G -n lv01 vg01
  Rounding up size to full physical extent 9.99 GiB
  Logical volume "lv01" created.
$

Verify the logical volume status by running following commands,

Perfect, above output shows that lv has been created successfully. So, to start using this lvm partition, first we must format it.

Step 4) Format LVM partition

To format LVM partition, we can use mkfs command. In this demonstration, I am formatting the lvm partition with ‘ext4’ file system.

Syntax:

$ sudo mkfs.ext4 <LV_Path>

$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg01/lv01

Output:

Above output shows that lvm has been formatted with ext4 filesystem successfully. To access this file system, create a mount point using mkdir command and mount it.

$ sudo mkdir /data
$ sudo mount /dev/vg01/lv01  /data

Verify the mount using following df command

$ sudo df -Th /data
Filesystem                            Type    Size     Used    Avail    Use%    Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg01-lv01     ext4    9.8G     37M     9.3G    1%       /data
$

Great, above output confirms that LVM partition is mounted on /data directory. For permanent mounting append following entry in /etc/fstab file.

$ echo '/dev/vg01/lv01  /data  ext4  defaults 0 0' | sudo  tee -a /etc/fstab

That’s all from this post, I hope you have found it informative and insightful. Please do share your feedback and queries in below comments section.