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What is the GUI manager for LVM in 17.10? There is no system-config-lvm that I can see.

bill whittaker
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  • Can't you just run it from terminal? sudo system-config-lvm should launch it, or prompt you to install it (sudo apt-get install system-config-lvm) – brndn2k Oct 23 '17 at 23:36
  • I think system-config-lvm is no longer in use. $ sudo system-config-lvm sudo: system-config-lvm: command not found

    $ sudo apt install system-config-lvm Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package system-config-lvm

     – bill whittaker Oct 24 '17 at 02:31
  • It may not be by default, but is there any reason it wouldn't work? – brndn2k Oct 24 '17 at 02:32
  • It is not installed and there is no package. I forced an old package to install when 17.10 was in bata and found out the system-config-lvm command uses X11 so it would not run with out the X session. – bill whittaker Oct 24 '17 at 02:40
  • You can run 17.10 in X11 mode, which is probably fine for occasional use, although that might be a pain if you're using lvm all the time. – brndn2k Oct 24 '17 at 02:41
  • What solution have you found? – Suncatcher May 10 '18 at 16:13
  • @brndn2k: E: Unable to locate package system-config-lvm on 18.04. – Dan Dascalescu Dec 04 '19 at 02:13
  • @DanDascalescu I have no memory of writing this comment or anything about this software, but I'll give it a shot. Did you read the accepted answer? Alternatively, you can try this ppa which looks to have been recently updated https://launchpad.net/~hermlnx/+archive/ubuntu/system-config-lvm – brndn2k Dec 04 '19 at 02:22
  • @brndn2k: Yes, I've used kvpm to figure out where my swap "partition" was hiding. – Dan Dascalescu Dec 04 '19 at 02:28
  • @DanDascalescu then you're hitting the edge of my knowledge on the subject. Why do you need system-config-lvm if you already have kvpm? The accepted answer indicates that they're equivalent programs. – brndn2k Dec 04 '19 at 02:32
  • @brndn2k: this comment suggested using system-config-lvm instead of kpvm. – Dan Dascalescu Dec 04 '19 at 02:39
  • @DanDascalescu That comment is from 2014. I would take it with a grain of salt. In fact, you have a comment in that chain that calls it unmaintained. If you'd like to install it from the ppa I linked above, you may be able to get a version of it installed. Otherwise, you should probably look into alternatives (like kvpm). Especially if you already have kvpm installed from prior uses – brndn2k Dec 04 '19 at 02:46
  • btw, on 20.04 you can use the 18.04 GUI :> https://askubuntu.com/questions/1274537/how-to-manage-mirror-legs-and-stripes-in-graphical-way-now-w-o-kvpm-on-20-04/1274538#1274538 – Aquarius Power Sep 14 '20 at 01:59

5 Answers5

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Until Ubuntu 18.04 (included), you can install KVPM, but you have to install some KDE dependencies it has; they're not many as they said in their page. If you use some QT software it is very probable you already have the dependencies already on the system.

sudo apt install kvpm

system-config-lvm is outdated and can't manage some new features of LVM (as reported by itself) so don't bother trying to install it.

SebMa
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cablop
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    At least on 18.04, remember to go to Software & Updates and enable additional package sources in order to get access to the kvpm package. When booting from the recovery disk, this is not the default. – Scott Dudley May 22 '19 at 15:36
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    This package is not available in Debian 10 Buster. Also, right now, not available in Debian testing bullseye. – Ajeeb.K.P Nov 26 '19 at 03:01
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    Not only has KVPM not released in almost 4 years, and appears not to be packaged anywhere, but building it on a modern Linux system appears to have become impossible since its lvm2app.h dependency was dropped from the lvm2 source repository back in 2018. AFAICT that header has simply ceased to exist, making KVPM uncompilable. – FeRD May 06 '20 at 05:11
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    @FeRD it is working very well on 20.04, I just installed the 18.04 packages: unix.stackexchange.com/a/608708/30352 – Aquarius Power Sep 10 '20 at 23:33
  • @AquariusPower Since this is askubuntu that's a workable solution for the question posed here. However, I'm actually running Fedora 32. KVPM hasn't been packaged for Fedora in... well, actually I'm not sure it was EVER packaged for Fedora. And if it wasn't, we've missed our chance due to the lack of an available lvm2app.h in any recent/supported release. (Despite its age I was considering packaging it if it proved useful, until I discovered I can't even build it.) – FeRD Sep 11 '20 at 00:52
  • @FeRD if I am not wrong, you can convert any .deb to .rpm :) – Aquarius Power Sep 11 '20 at 05:20
  • installing kvpm tries to install VLC. This is insane. – Zulgrib Jul 25 '21 at 17:41
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You can use KDE Partition Manager

sudo apt install partitionmanager

At the moment it does not work under Gnome Wayland session. So you have to use either X11 or Plasma Wayland. In the near future, KDE Partition Manager will be able to run without using root privileges (I already have most of the functionality working), then it will work much better under Wayland.

You can also allow running XWayland root GUI apps if you first run "xhost +".

EDIT: Ubuntu 20.04 has KDE Partition 4.0 which works well on Wayland.

Andrius Štikonas
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  • When i start it (from the dash) it complains about not having root privileges, but when i try sudo partitionmanager, it says it can't connect to the display. – Scimonster Oct 25 '17 at 08:24
  • @Scimonster If you use Wayland, you probably need to setup some environmental variables. KDE Partition Manager works either on X11 (so you can temporary switch to X11) or as Wayland client on Wayland. I don't think it works as XWayland client on Wayland. Unfortunately Gnome developers don't define required environmental variables in their Wayland session... Try "QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland partitionmanager". By the way, don't run sudo yourself, KPM should restart itself as root. We are slowly working on making KPM work without root privileges but it's not ready yet. – Andrius Štikonas Oct 25 '17 at 18:25
  • Ok, I had a chance to try Gnome Wayland briefly. For some reason it didn't work... So you'll have to switch to either X11 or Plasma Wayland session if you want to use KDE Partition Manager to edit LVM partitions. – Andrius Štikonas Oct 28 '17 at 01:55
  • Fedora 28 calls the package kde-partitionmanager, but the runtime is still partitionmanager. – Kevin Jun 03 '19 at 11:38
  • This worked just fine in Ubuntu 19.04 (Gnome). – Dawoodjee Jul 12 '19 at 12:54
  • works from ubuntu 19.10 installation ISO! – Denis Trofimov Oct 28 '19 at 18:28
  • This works in Debian 10 Buster and available in Debian testing bullseye(Not tested bullseye). – Ajeeb.K.P Nov 26 '19 at 03:00
  • This runs just fine in Gnome Shell on Wayland, but it seems to be largely a Gparted clone that can also see LVs. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't seem there's any way I can use it to perform the one task for which I needed a system-config-lvm replacement: Allocate and migrate logical volume extents across the various PVs in the volume group. The other recommended tool, KVPM, can (based on its screenshots) — but it last released in 2016-09, so that's not exactly confidence-inspiring. – FeRD May 06 '20 at 04:50
  • @FeRD indeed. It can only create/resize/delete logical volumes. I can move physical extents when resizing PV but you can't manually move them. – Andrius Štikonas May 06 '20 at 12:09
  • it is not good, it cant handle my existing mirror legs neither create new ones, there is no option to configure stripes, what they did to the perfect KVPM tool :(, it doesnt even seem to be able to manage volume groups... what a mess they did this time I cant even believe it... – Aquarius Power Sep 10 '20 at 00:27
  • @AquariusPower it can manage volume groups although, it indeed can't manage stries or mirror legs. Patches are welcome. I got enough working for my use case (for using with encrypted LUKS container). I guess KVPM had accumulated too much technical debt, KF5 port barely finished (not ported away from kdelibs4support, GUI runs as root, instead of unprivileged GUI and small daemon running as root) – Andrius Štikonas Oct 03 '20 at 17:27
  • @AndriusŠtikonas KVPM is working on 20.04! https://askubuntu.com/questions/1274537/how-to-manage-mirror-legs-and-stripes-in-graphical-way-now-w-o-kvpm-on-20-04/1274538#1274538, it worked for all I needed here quite well, this "technical debt" (?) would be the reason it was not available on 20.04 I guess, but it is working at least :) – Aquarius Power Oct 05 '20 at 23:54
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Blivet-gui is a graphical tool for storage management that uses Blivet library

https://github.com/storaged-project/blivet-gui

The installation instructions are here : https://github.com/storaged-project/blivet-gui#installation

SebMa
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Amr
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    While this is true, Blivet is virtually identical to GNOME Disks except that it actually seems to lack some of Disks' functionality (like benchmarking). The only functionality I noticed in Blivet that Disks lacks is the ability to assign PVs into and out of VGs. (That's all it can do with PVs, though. The author reports that even display of extent mappings is currently unsupportable, due to its libblockdev backend lacking the necessary APIs.) – FeRD May 06 '20 at 09:13
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This answer is based on comments above.

I installed an old version of system-config-lvm from reposcope. Then i had to make sure to run on Xorg, not Wayland -- log out and choose "Ubuntu on Xorg" from the gear menu, then log in. After that i could start it just fine from the dash or command line.

If you try it on Wayland (the default), it will crash and not open.

Scimonster
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0

If you are using any later than 18.04 by now,
you can actually use the old GUI from 18.04 as described here:
how to manage mirror legs and stripes in graphical way now w/o KVPM on 20.04?
by just installing these 2 packages:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/amd64/liblvm2app2.2/2.02.176-4.1ubuntu3.18.04.3
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/amd64/kvpm/0.9.10-1.1
manually (or with gdebi-gtk)

Aquarius Power
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