By default you create a NSS pool or volume that are managed by EVMS. EVMS is a disk manager originally developed by IBM.

In 2006 IBM discontinued development of the project. There have been no further releases until now.

Therefor Novell announced in 2008 that they will be moving from EVMS to LVM for NSS.

From OES2 it’s possible to run NSS on LVM with some with some disadvantages:

• no iManager support

• no NSS tools that use EVMS (like software RAID and the creation, modifying and deletion of partitions)

• no NSSMU support (the feature F4 update NDS works!)

• no Clustering

Advantages of NSS on LVM are:

• Better support of LVM in Linux

• Creation of a aligned partition (VMware)

So how can we create a NSS Pool with LVM?

1. Create a empty (aligned) partition with Yast

• Create the NSS Pool
  
  mkfs -t nsspool -n nsspoolname devname

• Create a directory for mounting the NSS Pool
  
  mkdir /mnt/pooldir

• Mount the pool
  
  mount -t nsspool devname nsspoolmountpoint -o name=nsspoolname

• Add the NSS pool to eDirectory
  
  NSSMU | Pools | F4 (NDS Update)

• Add the NSS Pool mountpoint to the fstab file
  
  devname nsspoolmountpoint nsspool auto,rw,name=nsspoolname

And now the NSS Volume

1. Create the NSS volume
   
   mkfs -t nssvol -n nssvolname nsspoolname

• Create the mountpoint for the NSS volume
  
  mdkir /media/nss/nssvolname

• Mount the NSS volume on the mountpoint
  
  mount -t nssvol nssvolname volmountpoint -o name=nssvolname

• Update eDirectory
  
  NSSMU | Volume | F4 (NDS Update)

• Add the NSS volume mountpoint to fstab file
  
  nssvolname nssvolumemountpoint nssvol auto,rw,name=nssvolname

Now you have a NSS Pool and Volume with LVM.

This and more technical articles about VMware and Novell can be found on http://blog.wilmsenit.nl