SOCISApplication programmers can access the LVM engine directly by using this programmer's toolkit (v1.4).
Version 1.4 has some changes to improve compatibility with non-IBM compilers, and also includes updates to the documentation. See the file README.1ST for more information.
Recently, I've also written a (simple) REXX interface to certain LVM functions. This library is called RxLVM, and provides read-only access to information about drives, volumes, partitions, and Boot Manager. The current version is 0.5.1, and is available for download here. RxLVM is made available under a BSD-type license; the source code is included.
LVM Background
The IBM Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is the disk management utility that replaces FDISK in recent versions of OS/2. It offers tremendous advantages over FDISK, but also has a somewhat steeper learning curve.
LVM's features include:
- Drive letters are no longer determined automatically by the OS according to disk layout. Instead, they are explicitly assigned by you, and remain that way until and unless you choose to change them.
- You can repartition your disk(s) and make almost any other change supported by LVM without having to reboot. (Most of the time, anyway.)
- Logical drives can consist of multiple partitions, even if they reside on different physical hard disks.
- Volumes can be expanded dynamically (when using the JFS file system).
- Boot Manager entries can now have names up to twenty characters long (instead of the old limit of eight).
- INT13X support allows partitions past the 1024-cylinder position on your hard disk(s) to be booted from (if your BIOS allows).
- Adding support for third-party file systems (like FAT32) no longer requires replacing or patching the OS/2 DASD drivers.
LVM was introduced into the OS/2 server product with OS/2 Warp Server for e-business (1999), and into the OS/2 client with the Convenience Package for OS/2 Warp version 4 (2000).
Redesigning LVM
A few years ago, I started working on a project to revamp LVM's user interface. Although the project is largely comatose at the moment, my web page discussing the subject is still available here.