On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:02:26 -0700,
David Sparks <daves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I have a SAN that allows resizing of the logical disks it exports.
>Basically you can increase the size of a logical disk, refresh the linux
>driver and linux sees a bigger disk.
>
>I put a XFS fs directly on one of these logical disks (ie /dev/sdb, not
>/dev/sdb1). When I change the size of /dev/sdb I can use xfs_growfs to
>gain usage of the extra space without LVM.
>
>I have two questions:
>
>Is using /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb1 for a fs safe to do? (I've never
>read anything authoritative on this subject)
A block device is a block device is a ... It is safe, as long as no
other tool tries to access /dev/sdb. In particular, if anything tries
to partition /dev/sdb or to install a boot loader on /dev/sdb then it
will overwrite the first superblock of the XFS partition. You are
gaining a little extra space, at the risk that some other disk tool
will accidentally destroy your filesystem.
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