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                              **The History**

I have a Samsung NP300 E5C laptop with 8GB RAM and a 750GB HDD.

I bought it as freeDOS. Then I installed Windows 8.1 pro 64 bit OS in it. Then I wanted to go for Ubuntu.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 via USB after burning the .iso file of it from the official download webpage.

Looking at some tutorials I found on the internet, I wanted all of my laptop to run only on Ubuntu, so taking heed of those instructions, I went for the "erase disk" and "guided install with lvm".

Now, after successfully installing Ubuntu on my laptop, I was happy except that there were no partitions or drives. I just had one big 698GB lvm2-pv partition on which Ubuntu was installed.

Tutorials in this website told me about Gpart, LVM Partition Tool, and also partitioning via Live CD/DVD.

But I learnt Gpart and LVM P-tool can be used only when the concerned drive is unmounted, and hence I tried Live booting, this time both from USB as well DVD, but to no avail. It straightaway boots to the Ubuntu login screen. I had disabled fastboot and set the boot priorities right in the BIOS too, but still I can't use any of those tools because I can't boot off from the USB or Live DVD.

Windows setup in USB and DVD too is ignored because there aren't any free partitions on my HDD.

                    **So where do I want help exactly**

Right now, I have a 750GB HDD of my laptop running Ubuntu 14.04.1 in a single partition which is lvm2-pv in nature. Its size is roughly around 698GB according to its "properties".

What I want is, I want to divide it, shrink it in some way, so that I have some free space to install Windows alongside Ubuntu. I do not mind if you suggest something to make my laptop freeDOS again. I can install Windows then, and then proceed(carefully) installing Ubuntu the way I want again.

Please help me. I am new to Linux distros, so please be a little detailed in your explanations. There is no data I want to save. I had backed up everything. So any type of suggestions are welcome. Thank You. :)

P.S. I cannot access BIOS anymore, I do not know why, but I can still access the GRUB menu.

Ashish Jois
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2 Answers2

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LVM has concepts of a physical volume and logical volume. You can resize logical volumes and even move them between physical drives (each with a physical volume), as much as you like. But that is only affecting the logical volumes, and you can't install Windows inside one. To install Windows, you have to put it in a bare partition without LVM that Windows can boot to.

LVM's not really designed to be able to easily resize or move physical volumes. It's designed for environments where you just throw a new physical drive in and start migrating. Manipulating a physical volume on an existing drive can be done, but it's complicated and if done wrong you can lose everything.

One alternative way to do this would be to migrate everything off the drive onto a portable or second drive, then reformat the first without LVM, partition it how you like (with a Windows partition) and then migrate back. You could decide you don't want the hassle of LVM and migrate raw. Still fairly involved though, as you still need to know how to resize partitions and do a raw block copy of a partition, and if you use LVM on your temporary drive you'll need to boot with a boot CD and mount an LVM volume manually, which is hair-raisingly tricky. I've done it before with the added complication of luks encryption, which adds another layer of complexity.

If you want to resize the LVM physical volume in-place, you can follow some of these instructions. It'll be faster but you have to be careful.

How can I resize an LVM partition? (i.e: physical volume)

Backup first as it's easy to make a mistake in which you lose your data.

thomasrutter
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I am new to Linux too, just installed ubuntu 14.04 after getting fed up with windows. Anyways, I found that lvm can be partitioned, at least this article says that: And the commands are:

lvreduce -- Reduce the size of a Logical Volume.
lvremove -- Remove a Logical Volume.
lvrename -- Rename a Logical Volume.
lvresize -- Resize a Logical Volume.
lvs -- Report information about Logical Volumes.
lvscan -- Scan (all disks) for Logical Volumes.

for more info: http://linux.die.net/man/8/lvm

Hope this helps. bye :)

Kaz Wolfe
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sunny P.
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  • Can you integrate a summary of the linked content into the post? If said link does, this answer is useless. :( – Kaz Wolfe Oct 08 '14 at 09:37
  • What the OP needs is to reduce the size of the physical volume (pv). This won't help with that. He won't be able to install Windows on an LVM logical volume. – thomasrutter Sep 06 '17 at 00:15