Logical Volume Manager (Linux)

Logical volume management system Logical Volume ManagerOriginal authorHeinz MauelshagenStable release2.03.38 / 15 December 2025; 9 months ago (15 December 2025) Written inCOperating systemLinux, NetBSDLicenseGPLv2Websitesourceware.org/lvm2/Repositorysourceware.org/git/?p=lvm2.git In Linux, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a device mapper framework that provides logical volume management for the Linux kernel. Most modern Linux distributions are LVM-aware to the point of being able to have their root file systems on a logical volume. Heinz Mauelshagen wrote the original LVM code in 1998, when he was working at Sistina Software, taking its primary design guidelines from the HP-UX's volume manager. Uses LVM is used for the following purposes: Creating single logical volumes of multiple physical volumes or entire hard disks (somewhat similar to RAID 0, but more similar to JBOD), allowing for dynamic volume resizing. Managing large hard disk farms by allowing disks to be added and replaced without downtime or service disruption, in combination with hot swapping. On small systems (like a desktop), instead of having to estimate at installation time how big a partition might need to be, LVM