Expanding a filesystem with Linux LVM

In today's world of ever-expanding storage requirements, it's not uncommon for the capacity of a hard drive to be eclipsed before it physically wears out. When this happens, it can be a pain to back everything up, replace the drive, and then restore your stuff back onto the new, larger drive. Not only is there margin for error, but copying that much data can take a really long time... and that assumes you can even buy a single hard drive large enough to store everything. Fortunately, Linux solves this problem by pooling together multiple physical drives into a single partition using the Logical Volume Manager. I recently had to expand an LVM partition and I ran into some speed bumps that I wanted to help others avoid.

Rooting and upgrading an HTC Hero (CDMA) phone

I recently bought an old HTC Hero (the Sprint/CDMA version).  I wanted something inexpensive to be used as a non-cell, WiFi-only device, and the 2.5-year-old Hero fit the bill nicely.  The only problem is that Sprint stopped updating the Hero at Android 2.1 (Eclair).  At this writing, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) has just been released, and most new phones are still shipping with v2.3 (Gingerbread).  The thought of running such an old version (v2.1) didn't really appeal to me, so I decided to root the phone and install a new v2.3 firmware.

New smart phones

So... this is what the 21st century looks like.

My wife and I just upgraded to our first smart phones last week.  Stacy got an HTC EVO 4G, which is over 18 months old, but very highly regarded.  I got a Motorola Photon 4G, which is only 3 months old.  We're both glued to them these days, spending an insane amount of time figuring out which features will make us more productive and which are just time sinks.