Re: [linux-lvm] Problems mounting LVM root volume

[Patrick van den Berg <P.van.den.Berg@ogd.nl>]

I'm sorry for this *very* late reply to my original post almost 3 weeks ago 
(original post is pasted below). I put the problem down for a while because I 
had some other things to do. I now have found the problem, and it wasn't LVM 
related at all. My kernel incorrectly detected my onboard Promise RAID 
controller (PCI cards should work fine though), and thus couldn't find the vg. 
I've now configured my onboard RAID controller to behave like an extra ATA-100 
controller, and have installed software raid. I now run LVM on top of software 
RAID; I have excluded / from LVM though, just to be sure.

Thanks to Francis SOUYRI, Pierre Lamb and Steven Lembark for their suggestions.

Regards,
Patrick van den Berg



>Hello everybody, 
> 
>I'm new at using LVM and I ran into trouble using it. I've got problems 
>mounting an LVM volume as root on my system running Gentoo Linux 1.4. My 
>configuration is as follows (skip to the bottom of the text for the actual 
>error message): 
> 
>Gigabyte mainboard with onboard Promise RAID. I've got 2 80GB discs attached 
>(same model) and configured as RAID1. I installed via the Gentoo RC1 Stage 1 
>CDROM. During boot of the CD I had to abort and add the "IDE0=0x9400,0x9802 
>IDE2=0x9c00,0xa002" parameters to be able to load the pdcraid module. 
> 
>My fstab looks as follows: 
> 
>/dev/ataraid/disc0/part1  /boot       ext3      noauto,noatime  1  1 
>/dev/vg3/rootlv           /           reiserfs  noatime         0  0 
>/dev/ataraid/disc0/part2  none        swap      sw              0  0 
>/dev/cdroms/cdrom0        /mnt/cdrom  iso9660   noauto,ro       0  0 
>proc                      /proc       proc      defaults        0  0 
>tmpfs                     /dev/shm    tmpfs     defaults        0  0 
> 
>I also compiled my kernel using the gentoo-sources, and with the following 
>options enabled: 
> 
>- LVM support 
>- Built-in RAM disk support with initrd 
>- DEV fs support 
>- mount DEV filesystem at boot 
>- ReiserFS support 
> 
>I also ran lvmcreate_initrd with the -M option, because everything is compiled 
>in the kernel. Also, when I run lvmceate_initrd without the -M options, it 
>returns errors and the lvm image is not created. 
> 
>My grub,conf (linked to menu.lst) looks as follows: 
> 
>default 0 
>timeout 30 
>splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz 
> 
>title=Gentoo 1.4 GNU/Linux on Antigone 
>root (hd0,0) 
>kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/vg3/rootlv ide0=0x9400,0x9802 
ide2=0x9c00,0xa002 
>initrd /boot/initrd-lvm.gz 
> 
> 
>When I boot the system grub starts correctly, but when grub wants to boot my 
>system the following messages appear: 
> 
>Code: 
>RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 
>Freeing initrd memory: 994k freed. 
>VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). 
>Mounted devfs on /dev 
>vgscan -- found inactive volume group "vg3" 
>vgscan -- ERROR 28 writing volumegroup backup file /etc/lvmtab.d/vg3.tmp in 
>vg_cfgbackup.c [line273] 
>vgscan -- ERROR: "lvm_tab_vg_remove(): unlink" removing volume group "vg3" 
>from "/etc/lvmtab.d" 
>vgscan -- "/etc/lvmtab" and "/etc/lvmtab.d" succesfully created 
>vgscan -- WARNING: This program does not do a VGDA backup of your volume group 
> 
>vgchange -- no volume groups found 
> 
>VFS: Cannot open root device "vg3/rootlv" or 00:00 
>Please append a correct "root=" boot option 
>Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount rootfs on 00:00 
> 
> 
>Now, the strange thing is, when I boot via the CD and do vgscan and 
>vgchange -ay by hand, I can mount /dev/vg3/rootlv normally! 
> 
>Does anybody got any ideas? I've run out of them   
> 
>Thanks for any help in advance. When you need any more info, just say so. 
> 
>Regards, 
>Patrick 
> 
> 
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