Disk-Resident Data Structures

We start our examination of LVM data structures with the layout of the physical volumes. Figure 11-4 shows us an overview of the LVM metadata structures on a physical volume. Bootable LVM disks are created with the pvcreate –B option and have a logical interchange format (LIF) file system header located in the first 8 KB of the disk.

The LIF header is actually an ancient file system type used by the HP-UX boot loader. In the case of a LVM disk, it is a simple directory structure containing pointers to boot files stored in the boot disk reserved area (BDRA) on bootable disks.

Following the boot block, we see the physical disk reserved area (PDRA). This structure contains the LVM record, which stores information about ...

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