Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 April 20

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April 20

Replacing LVM drives with larger drives on Linux

My question here is rather complicated.

My current computer has three internal SATA drive bays, all of which are filled. Two of them have a 6 TB drive each, running the EXT4 file system and combined with LVM into a single logical 12 TB volume. One of the partitions on the logical drive alone spans 11 TB, i.e. more than one of the physical drives. The remaining drive bay has a 1 TB drive running the NTFS file system with Windows 10 installed, which I rarely if ever use.

I am running out of space on the LVM EXT4 drives in a couple of years. I'd like to replace them with larger ones, but how do I go about this? I'd like a similar set-up as I currently have but with bigger drives, such as two 16 TB drives combined into one 32 TB logical volume. I don't have enough drive bays to connect four physical drives at once, and I think to be able to use a LVM volume at all, I need to have both of the physical drives it consists of connected at the same time. Is it somehow possible to put the old drives into some sort of USB cases and connect them as external drives via my computer's USB ports or something? JIP | Talk 16:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I've used SABRENT 2.5" drive enclosures with great success. They are about £10 (or 13.7 USD/11.24 EUR) from Amazon. SABRENT also do multi-disk docking station and 3.5" cases, but obviously that is a little more expensive. I've no connection with either Amazon or SABRENT other than as a satisfied customer. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:05, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

What I did both times I upgraded my LVM was remove the drives completely. Put in new drives. Upgrade to the latest version of Redhat, which is what I was using on the server. Connected the old drives using a USB adapter. There are many options. The one I use plugs into the SATA connector on the drive and has both power and USB coming out of it. It is not enclosed. The drive sits on my desk and hums. Once connected, I used pvscan to check the drives to make sure they were OK. They were. My plan was to swap the drives back if not. Then, I used vgs to see the volume ID on the old drives. Then, with lvs, I could see the mounting point for the logical volumne and mount it to a directory on my new drives. I pulled over the files I wanted to keep where I wanted them (and a lot went into a temporary "old junk" directory). When finished, I unmounted and unplugged the old drives and put them in my file cabinet in case I ever need them in the future. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Good Open Source CMS with Open Source Themes/Templates?

I'm still writing HTML and CSS by hand (and by Python script), but a friend is "just trying to build a website", and is shopping around for a content management system. They are aplenty, and most are Open Source. But it seems to be quite hard to find decent free themes and templates - a far as I can tell not because they don't exist, but because the internet is flooded with commercial subscription offers (of various and often dubious quality). Are there some good community sites to find good free stuff? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:16, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

You haven't specified for which CMS. I would recommend Wordpress. Free themes can be found over at https://wordpress.org/themes/ Polygnotus (talk) 08:27, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, the availability of good themes one of the criteria to choosing a CMS. He has settled on Joomla now, and has found out how to hack it himself to some degree. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:58, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Stephan Schulz: You can use Google Trends to get an idea of the relative popularity of Wordpress vs Joomla. Or you can look at something like w3techs. I would not recommend learning or using Joomla in 2024. Note that this contains 12,118 free themes. Polygnotus (talk) 15:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll pass it on! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting detail on the Google Trends page: The vast majority of frequent Joomla queries is German (7 of the top 10, with the others hard to determine). It may be much more popular on this side of the pond.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Stephan Schulz: Here are the results for Germany. But if you go further back in time you see that around 2011 Wordpress overtook Joomla in Germany. Joomla used to be pretty popular in Germany, 14 years ago. Polygnotus (talk) 15:24, 21 April 2024 (UTC)