C.0 Using Linux Commands to Manage NSS Devices

The Novell Storage Services (NSS) file system can exist on devices managed by any volume manager.

WARNING:The NSS configurations described in this section are untested and are not supported by Novell Support. Also, some key features, such as clustering with Novell Cluster Services, are not available.

Beginning with OES 11, the Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) was obsoleted by the new Novell Linux Volume Manager (NLVM). NLVM addressed EVMS deficiencies that were reasons that you might have used Linux commands to create pools and volumes on OES 2 SP3 and earlier. For example:

  • NLVM allows you to easily create pools on devices that contain Linux partitions and volumes.

  • NLVM provides a command line interface that supports scripting to create and manage pools and volumes.

  • NLVM creates pool objects in Device Mapper (DM) directly off the device, which improves NSS file system performance as compared the way the storage objects were created in DM by EVMS.

On OES 11 and later, the NSS management code does not support the pools that you create with the Linux mkfs command. You can use NSS commands to view and activate/deactivate the pool, but you cannot use NSS management tools (NSSMU, NLVM commands, and the Storage plug-in to iManager) to perform NSS management tasks such as expand, delete, and move. You must use mkfs to create volumes on the pool, but once created, the volumes can be detected and managed with NSS commands and management tools.

For these reasons, we strongly discourage you from using the Linux mkfs command to create NSS pools and volumes on OES 11 and later.

These instructions are only for those who can accept the risks involved with using an unsupported method. Everyone else should follow the instructions in Section 4.0, Installing and Configuring Novell Storage Services.

This section describes the following: