[lug] Reserving part of a file system -- quotas or something else

[David L. Anselmi]

Vince Dean wrote:
> We have suggested using logical volume management to create the
> partitions and to re-size them if necessary.  The system administrator
> likes to use LVM for the initial setup of a system, but he is reluctant
> to resize a logical volume, for fear of catastrophic data loss.  Is that
> a reasonable fear?

No, it's not a reasonable fear.  I've done this many times without problem.  (But you can't do silly 
things like de-allocate the super block.  LVM makes it easy to get right but probably not impossible 
to get wrong.)

Sounds like tune2fs options will do what you want though maybe they don't scale.  I think you'd want 
a special purpose file system to tune, not /.

> Any suggestions?  Assigning entire machines or RAIDs to the production jobs would certainly solve
> the problem, and might be a better use of our time and money

That's what virtualization is for and it's a better use of your time.

Dave