I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

novakk · 2025-11-13 20:44:08

So i've tinkered with arch for a while now and noticed an option for a LVM installation and thought to myself "sure why not".

But now i don't understand why anyone would use it. Every single package manager (yay, pacman, flatpak) tries to install something into the root directory which causes it to need to be resized extremely often and i have not found a single way of installing packages in the home folder. (it really makes no sense to me why a game like cs2 on steam or a browser or discord or whatever needs to be installed in root). I only got flatpaks to work with a user repository, but flatpaks suck, and don't work with basically anything (vscode doesn't support terminal, librewolf localstorage etc.)

so now im wondering if i should ditch the idea of using LVM entirely or is there a way of using it while installing to the home partition?

seth · 2025-11-13 21:39:18

Every single package manager (yay, pacman, flatpak) tries to install something into the root directory which causes it to need to be resized extremely often

No?
LVMs abstract partitions so you can relatively easily grow, shrink and extend them when need be, but "need be" is ideally "never" - the idea is not to fit your root partition to the actual immediate demands every day (ideally w/o any spare bits…)

If you're extremely short on space, making distribution between / and /home an impossible juggle, the sane solution is actually to not have an extra $HOME partition.

novakk · 2025-11-13 21:48:30

So what do you think i should do?
Should i keep trying to figure out a way to install everything in home or just merge the partitions?

seth · 2025-11-13 21:51:41

You cannot install into /home - your OP somehow doesn't contain a description of either problem nor status quo

lsblk -f

novakk · 2025-11-13 22:00:36

NAME           FSTYPE FSVER  LABEL UUID                                   FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                                      
zram0          swap   1      zram0 4d63e613-0113-4cbd-9993-3294da77f4d8                  [SWAP]
nvme0n1                                                                                  
├─nvme0n1p1    vfat   FAT32        E410-8CAA                               945.4M     7% /boot
├─nvme0n1p2    LVM2_m LVM2 0       SvMoQ6-R7ud-Wra7-sZE0-KKU8-feXs-eulZOW                
│ └─ArchinstallVg-home
│              ext4   1.0          95fdcc1c-0cc0-444b-969d-7e293e9a9e7a    682.5G    19% /home
└─nvme0n1p3    LVM2_m LVM2 0       1FY7aT-7beP-OoQB-90zM-qPso-LDsd-wMXk8m                
  ├─ArchinstallVg-root
  │            ext4   1.0          0377b034-4604-4387-8c5f-1d3b96ef0fb8      9.7G    45% /
  └─ArchinstallVg-home
               ext4   1.0          95fdcc1c-0cc0-444b-969d-7e293e9a9e7a    682.5G    19% /home
nvme1n1                                                                                  
├─nvme1n1p1    vfat   FAT32        563A-87A1                                             
├─nvme1n1p2                                                                              
├─nvme1n1p3    ntfs                AAD63B52D63B1DCF                                      
└─nvme1n1p4    ntfs                90FE59B7FE5995F6

this is my current setup

seth · 2025-11-13 22:22:26

So you've a 15GB root and 682GB /home spanning across nvme0n1p2 and nvme0n1p3

1. do you actually need more space on the /root partition (there're ~10GB free)
2. You could probably redistribute some of nvme0n1p3/ArchinstallVg/home to nvme0n1p3/ArchinstallVg/root ?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LVM#Re … _in_one_go

novakk · 2025-11-13 22:29:34

I think ill just merge them. I can't really keep booting live every time i need a change of partitions

cryptearth · 2025-11-14 01:49:08

novakk wrote:

i have not found a single way of installing packages in the home folder

that's on purpose
packages managed by the system package manager MUST NOT touch /home in any way!
and that's not just true for Arch or Linux but goes all the way back to at least Unix - and I guess even further to multics, although that I'm not sure about
/home is specifically for personal user files ONLY - NOT(!) for packages or software in general

steam acutally violates this as it in fact does install itself and games within /home (more specifically: /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/) - that's not how it's supposed to be - actually a more correct way would be the way how steam works on windows: steam itself and its games are installed system-wide into C:\Program Files\Steam

~ off-top
I don't understand why people try to squeeze thier systems into just a few GB and think "well, everything will be fine - I have 90% for /home"
it actually says it right there in the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … le_layouts

At least 23–32 GiB.

I'm actually not quite sure how your setup is even supposed to work or why you span a LVM group over two partitions on the same drive - that doesn't make much sense
did you even follow the official guide? or am I right with my suspicion of you followed some random (youtube) "guide"?
on a what looks like a 1tb(?) drive you should give the OS at least 100-200gb

Arch Linux

#1 2025-11-13 20:44:08

I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#2 2025-11-13 21:39:18

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#3 2025-11-13 21:48:30

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#4 2025-11-13 21:51:41

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#5 2025-11-13 22:00:36

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#6 2025-11-13 22:22:26

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#7 2025-11-13 22:29:34

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

#8 2025-11-14 01:49:08

Re: I don't understand how to use LVM on a desktop

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