Re: [linux-lvm] LVM pretends it has more space than it actually has

[Gijs <info@bsnw.nl>]

I managed to get all my data back by deleting the LVM volumes and 
recreating it without formatting the drives. I did have to run fsck on 
my data volume, but all data was intact as far as I could see.

And I also think I know what went wrong. Pretty much every reboot my 
raid-1 (for /boot) and my raid-5 MD-devices switch places with each 
other. So sometimes it's /dev/md126, the other times it's /dev/md127. I 
must have used the wrong device after a reboot, mistakenly thinking it 
was the LVM or boot partition.

On 21-9-2011 20:32, Gijs wrote:
> Unfortunately I can't find all the old LVM configs that the system 
> used. I was in the process of moving my root filesystem to the raid-5 
> array. Since I needed the root to be unmounted for that, I used a FC15 
> USB-bootable rescue system to do the copying of the root to the raid-5 
> array. And that's when things went wrong. Since the rescue system is 
> pretty much run from memory, I don't have the LVM configs that were 
> created when I was using the rescue system. I do have older configs 
> that were created when I was creating the raid-5 array on the system 
> itself, but those don't show anything wrong from what I can see. (and 
> I guess that's correct, since nothing was wrong at that time)
>
> I tried assembling/recreating an array on the PV-device, but that just 
> gave me the error "mdadm: no raid-devices specified." So I can't 
> really find an array on the LVM devices either.
>
> Some info I got from the PV:
> [root@poseidon ~]# pvdisplay -m /dev/md127
>   --- Physical volume ---
>   PV Name               /dev/md127
>   VG Name               raid-5
>   PV Size               3.64 TiB / not usable 0
>   Allocatable           yes
>   PE Size               4.00 MiB
>   Total PE              952919
>   Free PE               5252
>   Allocated PE          947667
>   PV UUID               ZmJtA4-cZBL-kuXT-53Ie-7o1C-7oro-uw5GB6
>
>   --- Physical Segments ---
>   Physical extent 0 to 714687:
>     Logical volume      /dev/raid-5/data
>     Logical extents     0 to 714687
>   Physical extent 714688 to 714933:
>     FREE
>   Physical extent 714934 to 714953:
>     Logical volume      /dev/raid-5/data
>     Logical extents     947647 to 947666
>   Physical extent 714954 to 719959:
>     FREE
>   Physical extent 719960 to 952918:
>     Logical volume      /dev/raid-5/data
>     Logical extents     714688 to 947646
>
> The empty spaces inbetween are from LVs there were created before. And 
> the 3rd segment is from when I tried to resize the data-LV to see if 
> that made any difference. It obviously didn't since it was the PV that 
> was actually too small, not the LV, which I figured out later.
>
> From what you say, it indeed sounds like I messed up some command that 
> caused an array to be created on an LV, but I can't really find any 
> evidence that I really did that. Is there any other explanation that 
> LVM is acting this way? Is it perhaps possible to tell LVM to run of 
> the configuration stored in /etc/lvm, instead of the metadata embedded 
> on the PV?
>
> There's also something that I don't understand. Why is it just the 
> data-LV? I had a swap and root LV as well, and those activated just 
> fine. Why would LVM have trouble activating the data-LV when it had no 
> trouble activating the swap/root-LV?
>
> On 19-9-2011 22:41, Ray Morris wrote:
>> First, if at all possible make a copy of the underlying block
>> device using dd or dd_rescue. Very often the most severe damage
>> is done during the attempt at recovery.
>>
>> Then let's find the oldest back up copies on the LVM meta data to
>> see if we can verify how things were set up when they were working.
>> This will find metadata over 50 days old:
>>
>> find /etc/lvm/archive -mtime +50
>>
>> mainly what we're looking for is to see if any mdadm RAID devices
>> were used as PVs at some point.
>>
>> Next try mdadm --assemble --readonly --assume-clean /dev/sdFOO to see
>> if you can assemble an array using the lower level device (which is
>> also marked as a PV right now). If it assembles, do:
>> pvdisplay -m /dev/md0
>> to see if it's a PV, and check to see if it has a filesystem.
>>
>> Based on the messages you got, it looks like /dev/md0 at one point
>> was the PV, rather than being assembled from LVs.
>
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