how many times can you spot the letter "v" in:
q: cloning lvm partitions i need to clone a centos installation from a 1tb disk partitioned with lvm, to several identical machines. the disk is mostly empty since only the operating system and some software are installed and configured.
without lvm i would copy the entire partition table, 
and then i would clone the partitions one by one using partclone:
sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sed -e 's/sda/sdb/' | sfdisk /dev/sdb
partclone.ext4 -c -s /dev/sda# -o - | partclone.ext4 -r -s - -o /dev/sdb#

however i think it will not work with lvm.
of course i could just use dd to clone the whole disk:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

but it takes too much time compared to partclone.
is there a way to clone the lvm partitions faster? i think one possible solution is to clone the lvm partitions to regular partitions in another disk using dd, and then clone the new disk to the other machines using partclone. but i do not know if something like this will work:
dd if=/dev/mapper/vg_node07-lv_root of=/dev/sdb1

can it work? can you tell me other solutions?

a: yes, you can use dd just as described.
what i would do is create the source image using the smallest possible partitions, clone them, then enlarge the logical volume and filesystem on the target. your cloning procedure becomes something like:
# <attach target for cloning, say, /dev/sdc>
# current_le=2000  (get exact "current le" value from lvdisplay)
# new_size="20g"
# parted -a optimal /dev/sdc mklabel gpt mkpart p1 ext4 0% 100%
# pvcreate /dev/sdc1
# vgcreate nodexx /dev/sdc1
# lvcreate -n lv_root -l $current_le nodexx
# dd if=/dev/node07/lv_root of=/dev/nodexx/lv_root bs=4m
# lvresize /dev/vg_nodexx/lv_root -l $new_size
# fsck.ext4 -f -y /dev/vg_nodexx/lv_root
# resize2fs /dev/vg_nodexx/lv_root

you'll want to book up on lvm and the file system tools, but this is a great candidate for shell scripting.

a: you can loopback-mount the lvm logical volumes with losetup using the --partscan option:
losetup --partscan --read-only --show --find /path/to/my/lv

this will return a path to the loopback device that the lvm logical volume has been bound to (something like /dev/loop0).  thanks to the --partscan option, the partitions will also be accessible (i.e. /dev/loop0p1, /dev/loop0p2, ...).  you can partclone those directly.
once you are finished, you can release the loop device with:
losetup -d /dev/loop0

be sure to specify the same loop device the first call to losetup returned (it might be a different number than 0).

a: you can do  almost the same thing that vmware p2v software does.  what it does is create the new filesystems on the new system exactly as you want them to be, then do a tar of the filesystems across to the other server.  this way you get everything exactly the same, and you are only copying files and space that are currently being used.  then you have to do the grub stuff to make sure its bootable.

a: lvm does a lot of things much more complicated than just a simple disk with a simple partition... and because of that... cloning is a much more complicated process.
in fact, you'd be better off (re?)creating the lvm volume manually (or scripted) and then simply using the sfdisk/partclone process to clone the actual data to the new lvm.
this would also give you the added benefit of being able to clone a raid-1 system to a raid-5 setup across more disk... as the partitions would be unaffected.

user
The given text has sixty-six "v"s.
assistant