[linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[Lee Gold]

Hi,

Tried adding a disk with LVM2. Rebooted maybe too soon and Grub became
confused and system will not boot.

It's Unbuntu Server 10.04. Removed new disk - grub still confused, no
boot. I put in a live Ubuntu disk to look and hopefully repair non-LVM
ext3 boot partition...somehow. But I can not mount the boot partiton.
Yet, sudo fdisk -l says ID 83, Linux for /dev/sda1 - the boot partition.
But when I try: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/bootp I get: mount:unknown
filesystem type 'LVM2_member'...fdisk reports differently...

How can this be right? I clearly remember installing the /boot as an
ext3 partiton.

sudo pvs says:

PV        VG       Fmt   Attr   PSize    PFree 

/dev/sda1          lvm2  a-     190.00m  190.00m 

/dev/sda2 system   lvm2  a-      92.97g       0

I can mount the partitons in /dev/sda2 by installing LVM2 while using
the live disk and some command-line - so I can recover the data if
necessay so all is not lost. But I would really like to know what is
going on and how to get the system booting again. Again the boot
partition was ext3 and separate, why can't I access it, fdisk
confirms...?  Thanks.

Lee G.

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Choose from over 50 domains or use your own

Re: [linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Lee Gold wrote:

> How can this be right? I clearly remember installing the /boot as an
> ext3 partiton.
>
> sudo pvs says:
>
> PV        VG       Fmt   Attr   PSize    PFree
>
> /dev/sda1          lvm2  a-     190.00m  190.00m
>
> /dev/sda2 system   lvm2  a-      92.97g       0
>
> I can mount the partitons in /dev/sda2 by installing LVM2 while using
> the live disk and some command-line - so I can recover the data if
> necessay so all is not lost. But I would really like to know what is
> going on and how to get the system booting again. Again the boot
> partition was ext3 and separate, why can't I access it, fdisk
> confirms...?  Thanks.

I would suspect that sda and sdb do not point to the disks you think
they do.  BIOS often swaps these around without warning.  You don't mention
your physical connection (IDE/SATA/USB/FW/iSCSI/...).  This would give a clue
as to what BIOS might have done - although it really isn't an LVM question.
This is why it is preferred to use filesystem/PV UUIDs or labels 
rather that whatever the current device address happens to be.

So it looks like you made /boot into a PV, although pvcreate should have
warned that the block device was mounted.

--
 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
     Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.

Re: [linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[Lee Gold]

  

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:11 -0400, "Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart@bmsi.com>
wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Lee Gold wrote:
> 
> > How can this be right? I clearly remember installing the /boot as an
> > ext3 partiton.
> >
> > sudo pvs says:
> >
> > PV        VG       Fmt   Attr   PSize    PFree
> >
> > /dev/sda1          lvm2  a-     190.00m  190.00m
> >
> > /dev/sda2 system   lvm2  a-      92.97g       0
> >
> > I can mount the partitons in /dev/sda2 by installing LVM2 while using
> > the live disk and some command-line - so I can recover the data if
> > necessay so all is not lost. But I would really like to know what is
> > going on and how to get the system booting again. Again the boot
> > partition was ext3 and separate, why can't I access it, fdisk
> > confirms...?  Thanks.
> 
> I would suspect that sda and sdb do not point to the disks you think
> they do.  BIOS often swaps these around without warning.  You don't
> mention
> your physical connection (IDE/SATA/USB/FW/iSCSI/...).  This would give a
> clue
> as to what BIOS might have done - although it really isn't an LVM
> question.
> This is why it is preferred to use filesystem/PV UUIDs or labels 
> rather that whatever the current device address happens to be.
> 
> So it looks like you made /boot into a PV, although pvcreate should have
> warned that the block device was mounted.
> 

In my opinion LVM2 should of flagged me when it went about changing my
config - which it did - the boot partition's location and spec could not
of changed on it's own and while the bios could shuffle things around
only an active script could of changed things as it did and it should
have warned me - that's Comp Sci 101 - when something happens pull over
to the side of the road AND put your indicator on too. Maybe I'm wrong
but if I am it's moot. "Once burned twice shy".

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Access all of your messages and folders
                          wherever you are

Re: [linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[Ray Morris]

> In my opinion LVM2 should of flagged me when it went about changing my
> config - which it did - the boot partition's location and spec could
> not of changed on it's own


Either LVM wrote fdisk into itself, which has never happened before to
anyone else, or you made a typo.
-- 
Ray Morris
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Re: [linux-lvm] Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it

[Phillip Susi]

On 6/17/2011 11:59 AM, Lee Gold wrote:
> In my opinion LVM2 should of flagged me when it went about changing my
> config - which it did - the boot partition's location and spec could not

/It/ did not do anything.  /You/ ran pvcreate on the wrong partition, 
probably because when you connected the second disk, it became sda 
instead of sdb as you probably expected, and you ran pvcreate /dev/sdb1, 
which was your boot partition.

[linux-lvm] Fedora 15 lvm root device not found

[Stamper, Brian P. (ARC-D)[Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies Inc. (SGT Inc.)]]

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I just upgraded a Fedora system from 13 to 15, and now I can't get it to boot.  I'm getting dumped to a dracut shell and getting the error dm-linear device lookup failed.  In the dracut output with debug on, I see dracut scan my drives, and I see it find my 3 LVs, but it then tries to do something with them, I get the error, and it then fails out with root device not found and drops me into dracut.

Here's the odd thing, booting off the rescue dvd my volumes are fine.  The LVM can be mounted no problem.

This makes me think that there's something missing from the kernel or initrd.  I can't really figure out what though.  I've gone through the output of lsmod when running from the rescue dvd.  I've even build a few ramdisks including all the modules that I thought might be related (dm, lvm, mdraid, dmraid, multipath).  I tried building them with mkinitrd -with=module, and I tried again with dracut -add=modules.  No change in results.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  I feel like the system can be rescued, but I don't know how to work backward through dracut to find out why it's unable to find my root volume.  Any help would be appreciated.  Cross-posting to dm-devel.

Thanks,
-Brian

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Re: [linux-lvm] Fedora 15 lvm root device not found

[Stamper, Brian P. (ARC-D)[Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies Inc. (SGT Inc.)]]

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I was able to boot this system by taking an initramfs from another Fedora 15 test system and putting it in /boot and referencing it in grub.conf.  However, I need to find out why an initramfs I build on the system is unable to boot.

When I'm in dracut, I was able to do some checking.  Using the lvm commands, I was able to activate and deactivate the vg, display the lvs, but not use them.  I would get "device not found", and in /dev/mapper, the lvm devices were not there.  There were other lvm devices there, but not from my primary system lvm.  The only thing that stands out about it is that it is ext4, not ext3.

Comparing the decompiled initrds, there's no modules that stand out.  Sas.out is a listing of the WORKING initrd, tfs.out is the NOT WORKING initrd.

[root@testfs ramdisks]# diff sas.out tfs.out
718d717
< ./lib/firmware/ql2500_fw.bin
1248,1249d1246
< ./etc/ld.so.conf.d/openmotif-64.conf
< ./etc/ld.so.conf.d/kernel-2.6.38.7-30.fc15.x86_64.conf
1252c1249
< ./etc/ld.so.conf.d/kernel-2.6.34.8-68.fc13.x86_64.conf
---
> ./etc/ld.so.conf.d/qt-x86_64.conf
1262d1258
< ./etc/modprobe.d/openfwwf.conf
1278a1275
> ./etc/udev/rules.d/40-multipath.rules
1317a1315
> ./lib64/libcryptsetup.so.1.2.0
1322a1321
> ./lib64/libcap.so
1407d1405
< ./lib64/libcryptsetup.so.1.1.0
1419a1418
> ./lib64/libnss_files-2.12.2.so
1480a1480
> ./usr/bin/checkisomd5
1491d1490
< ./usr/lib64/libnss_files.so
1517a1517
> ./usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth

Nothing there looks relevant.  Libcryptsetup needs updating on the test system I pulled the initrd from.  The q-logic firmware is irrelevant.  There are a couple of older kernels on the test system.  Libcap.so is a dependency of legato backup software.  Libnss_files should have nothing to do with accessing an LVM.

So I'm stuck.  My system is up, but only if I build an initrd on another system and copy it over, meaning next time I update the kernel it will not boot.  Nothing's jumping out at me as obviously missing modules from the broken initrd.  Where else can I look?

-Brian


On 6/29/11 1:47 AM, "Brian Stamper" <brian.p.stamper@nasa.gov> wrote:

I just upgraded a Fedora system from 13 to 15, and now I can't get it to boot.  I'm getting dumped to a dracut shell and getting the error dm-linear device lookup failed.  In the dracut output with debug on, I see dracut scan my drives, and I see it find my 3 LVs, but it then tries to do something with them, I get the error, and it then fails out with root device not found and drops me into dracut.

Here's the odd thing, booting off the rescue dvd my volumes are fine.  The LVM can be mounted no problem.

This makes me think that there's something missing from the kernel or initrd.  I can't really figure out what though.  I've gone through the output of lsmod when running from the rescue dvd.  I've even build a few ramdisks including all the modules that I thought might be related (dm, lvm, mdraid, dmraid, multipath).  I tried building them with mkinitrd -with=module, and I tried again with dracut -add=modules.  No change in results.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  I feel like the system can be rescued, but I don't know how to work backward through dracut to find out why it's unable to find my root volume.  Any help would be appreciated.  Cross-posting to dm-devel.

Thanks,
-Brian

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Re: [linux-lvm] Fedora 15 lvm root device not found

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2011, Stamper, Brian P. (ARC-D)[Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies Inc. (SGT Inc.)] wrote:

> I was able to boot this system by taking an initramfs from another Fedora 15
> test system and putting it in /boot and referencing it in grub.conf.
>  However, I need to find out why an initramfs I build on the system is
> unable to boot.
> 
> When I?m in dracut, I was able to do some checking.  Using the lvm commands,
> I was able to activate and deactivate the vg, display the lvs, but not use
> them.  I would get ?device not found?, and in /dev/mapper, the lvm devices
> were not there.  There were other lvm devices there, but not from my primary
> system lvm.  The only thing that stands out about it is that it is ext4, not
> ext3.

This is a Fedora issue, not LVM, and you might try the Fedora IRC chat, but...

Have you tried running mkinitrd again since you got the system booted?
Since you just upgraded, mkinitrd could have screwed up since drivers
and device names may have changed from 13 to 15.  I even had this problem
with CentOS, 5.5 -> 5.6 mkinitrd had to be run again (after booting from
older kernel).

--
 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
     Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.

[linux-lvm] Mail etiquette ( was: Fedora 15 lvm root device not found )

[Phillip Susi]

You appear to have sent this message as a reply to my message in the 
thread with the subject "Help to mount ext3 boot partiton which reports 
it's LVM2_member when I try to mount it".  As a result, it shows up as a 
reply in that thread, when you really meant to start a new thread.  This 
causes needless confusion and is poor etiquette.

In the future, when you mean to compose a new message, please do not 
reply to an existing one and delete all of the quotations and change the 
subject line.

On 6/29/2011 4:47 AM, Stamper, Brian P. (ARC-D)[Stinger Ghaffarian
Technologies Inc. (SGT Inc.)] wrote:
> I just upgraded a Fedora system from 13 to 15, and now I can't get it
> to boot.  I'm getting dumped to a dracut shell and getting the error
> dm-linear device lookup failed.  In the dracut output with debug on,
> I see dracut scan my drives, and I see it find my 3 LVs, but it then
> tries to do something with them, I get the error, and it then fails
> out with root device not found and drops me into dracut.
>
> Here's the odd thing, booting off the rescue dvd my volumes are fine.
> The LVM can be mounted no problem.
>
> This makes me think that there's something missing from the kernel or
> initrd.  I can't really figure out what though.  I've gone through
> the output of lsmod when running from the rescue dvd.  I've even
> build a few ramdisks including all the modules that I thought might
> be related (dm, lvm, mdraid, dmraid, multipath).  I tried building
> them with mkinitrd -with=module, and I tried again with dracut
> -add=modules.  No change in results.
>
> I'm not sure where to go from here.  I feel like the system can be
> rescued, but I don't know how to work backward through dracut to find
> out why it's unable to find my root volume.  Any help would be
> appreciated.  Cross-posting to dm-devel.
>
> Thanks, -Brian