Well with my setup I do have the boot partition separate from the LVM and the raid is pure software as far as I know. I was just asking if it was safe to do so. Unfortunately the boot partition is a bit on the smaller size at 100mb so I can easily fit around 2 kernels. I guess the other reason I am thinking to switch is because with Ubuntu, they have a predictable release schedule and with 12.04 LTS around the corner, I can get a server OS that is "stable" and up to date. I know I can compile from source all of the packages I have, like the the kernel and the software for the LAMP stack that I am also running. 

I also like the fact for the Ubuntu implementation of Samba; I can use the the system username and password instead of first creating a user on the system and again as a samba user. Other than that I do like Centos right now. Thanks for your help.

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:
Should be able to - depends how you're partitioned.

I'm assuming your raid0 is done with mdadm and not fake-raid based.

As long as your boot partition (non-lvm) is large enough to support enough kernels, you should be able to install over the system lv's you don't want, and not touch the ones that you do.  Probably just create new lv's assuming you have the space for new root, usr, var, whatever you want.  I usually create home without a separate partition, leaving alone the existing home, and simply mount the /home lv after reinstall "just in case".

Note I've had some weirdness with ubuntu/mdadm depending what version mdadm metadata it was built with.  In 11.04 I had to build md's specifically to use 0.90 metadata to work fully (i.e. reboot without having to busybox assemble md manually), 11.10 and higher I had to build the raid specifically with the current version (default) to work.

I layered luks/lvm/ext4 atop this too, never did figure out exactly which was borking it, but the metadata was the trick for me.  It also could have been related to my ssd alignment partitioning that always gave me grief with low-level fs.

-mb



On 03/21/2012 03:19 PM, Stephen wrote:
if it boots up and sees the LVM then you should be able to customer
partition and configure without reformatting.

you can look and see a fair amount without even writing changes to the disk.

However i would still make a backup.

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Nadim Hoque<nadimhoque@gmail.com>  wrote:
I currently have Centos 6 installed with software raid 0 with LVM. I was
wondering if it is possible to install Ubuntu server 10.04 with those
settings without data loss and that the current raid/lvm will stay in tact.
So far in my experience I should be able to do this, but I just wanted your
input on the matter. I might switch to ubuntu server for the vast number of
packages in the default repos and when I used it before I really liked it (I
love how the default repos have what I want, and ufw is nice as well).

--
Nadim Hoque
Undergraduate Intern
ASU Advanced Computing Center
Cell: 480-518-6235

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ASU Advanced Computing Center
Cell: 480-518-6235