Guide assumes a fresh install will be performed, existing disk partitions will removed before LVM is created. This can be embedded into the Arch Install Guide, which does not exist yet. Encryption article needs to be written as well.

The following details an installation using LVM on Archlinux, though it can be adapted to create any LVM management scheme even for non-boot disks.

Check if there is anything on the disk

lsblk

Wipe

sgdisk --zap-all /dev/<target_drive>

cfdisk /dev/<target_drive>

Select MBR/DOS Set size to 1G, this will be /boot Make an Extended Partition, this will show as a 1K partition and will contain the LVM physical volume Inside the extended partition, create a partition using all of the remaining space.

Example of the lsblk for after you are done:

nvme0n1     259:0    0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:2    0     1G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2 259:5    0     1K  0 part 
└─nvme0n1p5 259:6    0 222.6G  0 part

Create the physical volume on the nested partition in the extended partition

pvcreate /dev/<partition in extended partition>

The volume group will be created here and given a name, use the same partition as above.

vgcreate <volume_group> /dev/<partition in extended partition>

Logical Volume creation starts here. The follow commands will setup a root and swap partition. Be sure to use the same volume group name as you created in the previous step. Sizes are specified as G=gigabyte, M=megabyte, and so on.

lvcreate -L <size> <volume_group> -n root
lvcreate -l 100%FREE <volume_group> -n swap

Example:

nvme0n1         259:0    0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1     259:2    0     1G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2     259:5    0     1K  0 part 
└─nvme0n1p5     259:6    0 222.6G  0 part 
  ├─archvg-root 254:2    0 214.6G  0 lvm  
  └─archvg-swap 254:3    0     8G  0 lvm

mkfs.ext4 /dev/<volume_group>/root
mkswap /dev/<volume_group/swap
swapon /dev/<volume_group/swap

The lvm partitions are always refered to as /dev/<volume_group>/<lvm_part>

Example:

/dev/archvg/root/

After you have your partitions you can continue installing Arch with the guide. You only need to take note to use the lvm names of the partitions and make sure to edit the mkinitcpio.conf file in the step below.

Before installing the boot loader (grub), do the following so that the kernel can see the lvm structure. Add systemd and sd-lvm2 to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

HOOKS=(base systemd ... block sd-lvm2 filesystems)

Generate init using new hooks

mkinitcpio -p linux

There are numerous scenarios where one may want to resize your LVM root volume, such as after a migration to a larger boot disk.

First the space that is going to be appended needs to be partitioned. I prefer to use cfdisk for this.

$ sudo cfdisk /dev/sdX

Take note of the newly created block device partition.

Create a physical volume with pvcreate of your newly created partition.

$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdX

You can type vgdisplay if you are unsure what your volume group is called.

$ sudo vgextend <volume-group> /dev/sdX

You can now extend the root logical volume with lvextend

$ sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/<volume-group/<logical-volume>

You can type lvdisplay if you are unsure what your volume group is called.

You can check your filesystem size, before and after extending with df -h /:

Extend filesystem with resize2fs without umount:

sudo resize2fs /dev/<volume-group/<logical-volume>