[linux-lvm] Help recovering metadata

[Roy Nicholl <RNicholl@NBNet.nb.ca>]

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This should actually be titled, "Help recovering from stupidity ... why 
not to use GUI administration tools"

I recently had a box fail [VRM on the MB] and moved it's drive into 
another machine running SuSE 9.0.  On this drive where separate 
patitions for boot,root,swap and one partition comprised of a VG 
(system)  containing eight LVs (usr, opt, var, tmp, local, home, 
mirror, & vmware).  Each logical volume contains a JFS filesystem.

When I went to view the VG using the LVM tool under YaST, I somehow 
managed to re-inistalize the VG on the disk partition [read: blew away 
the existing metadata] ... Lesson ... use the command-line, Luke.

Now of course there is data on this disk that I really need (in home, 
mirror and vmware) and I know that it is still there - I make an image 
of the disk using EnCase and walked through it.  EnCase does not appear 
to undestand the Linux LVM or the JFS filesystem, so I was unable to 
put humpty dumpty back together again.

Since all I did (irony intended) was re-initialise the VG descriptor and 
metadata, the LVs and their respective filesystems must still be there 
[my snoop with EnCase would appear to confirm this hypothesis].  How do 
I go about finding the beginning of each LV/filesystem and re-creating 
the former VG metadata ... and before you ask, now I do not have 
vgcfgbackup file [but I still have the device nodes and the 
correspnding 'group' file].

Help would be most appreciated.

Roy


-- 
Roy Nicholl
283-A Connaught St.            
Fredericton, NB			
Canada	E3B 2B3
E-mail: RNicholl@NBNet.nb.ca

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