Virtualization

Copying a Logical Volume or Partition over SSH

This should only be attempted on either a snapshot lvm volume, or an unmounted hard drive partition!

Using ssh and dd you can copy any LVM or (unmounted) hard drive partition over the internet to a new machine easily.  You can do a "push" or "pull" copy.  Here's a "push" copy:

dd if=/dev/vg0/partition-snapshot bs=1k |
   ssh remotehost dd of=/dev/vg0/partition-destination bs=1k

Here’s one for the hall of fame of terrible error messages.
When trying to add a mirror to a LVM volume on a linux box, you get this message:
#lvconvert -m 1 disks/root /dev/sdb2

Not enough PVs with free space available for parallel allocation.
Consider --alloc anywhere if desperate.
This message is completely useless, we have TONS of free extents on both disks. So we check for help