How to reduce an LVM partition

LVM gives flexibility to systems administrators work when it comes to disk space management. A situation where we are running out of disk space in a linux box and if partition created is on LVM, then we can make some free space in the volume group by reducing the LVM using "lvreduce" utility.

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Caution:  Backup all your critical data. 
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PLAN OF ACTION:
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Before, starting up with the process I will explain about our plan of action. In my server, the current partitions are as below:

The lvm partition "opt_oracle" is 10 GB, I want to reduce it to 8 GB.

PROCEDURE: 
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STEP 1: Umount /opt/oracle
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[root@MANINMANOJ]#umount /opt/oracle
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STEP 2: PERFORM AN FSCK ON THE LVM PARTITION.
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e2fsck -yf /dev/mapper/VG_DAS_1-opt_oracle
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STEP 3: Shrink the size of filesystem using resize2fs
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resize2fs /dev/mapper/VG_DAS_1-opt_oracle 8G
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Now, 8 GB is the desired size of  /opt/oracle.

STEP 4:  REDUCE THE LVM SIZE USING lvreduce 

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lvreduce -L 8G /dev/mapper/VG_DAS_1-opt_oracle

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STEP 5: PERFORM AN FSCK

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e2fsck -yf /dev/mapper/VG_DAS_1-opt_oracle

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STEP 6: MOUNT THE FILE SYSTEM.

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mount /opt/oracle

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Now, you can see the size of "/opt/oracle" has been reduced to 8 GB as below:

Now, you can use vgreduce to get the free this free space to physical volume.

The command syntax is as below:

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vgreduce <Volume group name>  <physical volume name>

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With this done in this post, I will explain about the procedure to extend an LVM partition in my next post.