[linux-lvm] lilo wrote to an lvm disk

[linux-lvm] lilo wrote to an lvm disk

[Justin Bauer]

Hi,

I was having trouble earlier with lilo, and while configuring it, I
wrote it to the mbr on a disk I had lvm on.  The only place I found that
mentioned this problem was in an email to this list in march 2001, over
two years ago.  It basically said that the lvm disk would be hosed.  Is
there anyway to get the data off the disk? or repair it?

Also, in the future, could I use the mbr if the pv was a partition
rather than the whole disk?

thanks,

Justin

Re: [linux-lvm] lilo wrote to an lvm disk

[Luca Berra]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 09:13:45PM -0600, Justin Bauer wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I was having trouble earlier with lilo, and while configuring it, I
>wrote it to the mbr on a disk I had lvm on.  The only place I found that
>mentioned this problem was in an email to this list in march 2001, over
>two years ago.  It basically said that the lvm disk would be hosed.  Is
>there anyway to get the data off the disk? or repair it?

if you have a recent metadata backup you can try using vgcfgrestore to
put the metadata back on the disk.

other options depend on what was the disk layout:
was it the only disk you had in the volume group?
are there lv sharing more than one pv?
do you recall the LV layout?

>Also, in the future, could I use the mbr if the pv was a partition
>rather than the whole disk?

that would be a good idea.
as much as i hate partition tables i found that just too much code in
linux applications depend on having a partition table, so wasting
512bytes for a partition table entry is easier than fixing everything
that breaks.

L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
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Re: [linux-lvm] lilo wrote to an lvm disk

[Justin Bauer]

Luca,

> >I was having trouble earlier with lilo, and while configuring it, I
> >wrote it to the mbr on a disk I had lvm on.  The only place I found that
> >mentioned this problem was in an email to this list in march 2001, over
> >two years ago.  It basically said that the lvm disk would be hosed.  Is
> >there anyway to get the data off the disk? or repair it?
> 
> if you have a recent metadata backup you can try using vgcfgrestore to
> put the metadata back on the disk.

I didn't back anything up, but doesn't it do that by default?  It writes
something to /etc/lvmconf right?

> 
> other options depend on what was the disk layout:
> was it the only disk you had in the volume group?
> are there lv sharing more than one pv?
> do you recall the LV layout?

The bad disk happens to be the first disk in the group.  I didn't do
striping.  The first disk is completely full, well except for the 512
bytes at the beginning :)  There are two other disks as well, the second
disk is mostly full, and the third is empty.

Thanks,

Justin