[linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Richard Mollel]

For some unknown reasons...my LVM PV's which have
worked for several years are dropping!
Here is one example....the node is still up, the
partition usable...but pvscan/pvdisplay don't display
anything. 
I know if i reboot, i wont be able to access this
partition anymore! It has happened to one filesystem
already. Any ideas what is going on here?

/dev/sdb1: unknown volume type
/dev/sdc1: unknown volume type
/dev/sdd1: unknown volume type
  No physical volume label read from /dev/sdb1
  Failed to read physical volume "/dev/sdb1"
  No physical volume label read from /dev/sdc1
  Failed to read physical volume "/dev/sdc1"
  No physical volume label read from /dev/sdd1
  Failed to read physical volume "/dev/sdd1"

Well, before i finished typing this message...the node
locked up (un-related issue) and upon reboot...it does
not find any PV's, thus VG's and LV's.

I followed a recovery procedure from
http://codeworks.gnomedia.com/archives/2005/general/lvm_recovery/
on a 5TB reiserfs filesystem...and the FS is still
hosed, with --rebuild-tree failing. I will post a
separate email for that. Now i am wondering how to
recover this one successfully...and also, why is it
happening? i have another node, that is still up, with
same symptoms..i know as soon as i reboot, it wont
work.

_Thanks

Rick...


 
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Re: [linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Alasdair G Kergon]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 09:44:22AM -0800, Richard Mollel wrote:
> For some unknown reasons...my LVM PV's which have
> worked for several years are dropping!

A simple rule to follow when reporting a problem:
  Tell people the precise version of the software you're using - and the
  distro!

And if things suddenly stopped working, tell people about anything possibly
relevant that might have changed recently on the system.

Alasdair
-- 
agk@redhat.com

Re: [linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Richard Mollel]

Sorry...
I am running Mandriva 2006.0, with LVM2
(lvm2-2.01.09-1mdk). I am in the process of migrating
to Redhat ES 4.0. I have external storage, EonStor,
virtually partitioned into 2+2+1TB to overcome 2TB
limitation...and brought together with LVM with PV's
sdb, sdc and sdd.
I have migrated one such partition to Redhat
successfully, simple vgexport and vgimport on the
other end after moving physical device.
So i rebooted one box to add storage so as to migrate
data on reiserfs to new storage, lvm2+ext3. Only then,
the old LVM group did not come up. pvscan shows "no
matching devices". So i had to go thru LVM
recovery...which has fsck'ed my LVM partition, it is
no longer mountable, reiserfs --rebuild-tree could not
complete, not finding metadata.
So i started looking at other nodes, 4 of them, all
Mandriva 2006.0 with LVM2....i perform pvscan once, it
shows output, then probably pvdisplay, and pvscan
again...No output! Only option at that point has been
to backup data as fast as possible...and upon reboot,
all PV's as expected are not recognized,.....and going
thru lvm_recovery (as detailed on
http://codeworks.gnomedia.com/archives/2005/general/lvm_recovery/)
messes up reiserfs completely. 
I have ran pvscan on 4 different systems, only to kill
LVM...it seems somehow it is removing LVM label from
physical partition....
I have not been able to pin-point where the problem
might be. On the external Raid5 device, it does not
show any signs of fault...besides, we are talking of 4
different systems and four different (same make)
storage devices.
As for mandriva 2006.0, i simply take all updates it
recommends that i am missing...and i cannot see
anything remotely close to causing problems. I have
osiris running to detect rpm changes...and recently i
can only see ssh related stuff, running really
concerning.
So i am hurriedly backing up all filesystems that are
on LVM....since it seems to be to common
denominator...though i dont know why....

Just before i sent this out...i saw this thread::
https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2005-May/msg00032.html

And that was exactly my problem!! Not sure why!!
I have now been able to perform::
losetup /dev/loop0 /dev/sdb
losetup /dev/loop1 /dev/sdc
losetup /dev/loop2 /dev/sdd

and, performed : vgchange -a y
(it complained of duplicate uuid's, recreated on
sdb1,sdc1 and sdd1 since pvcreate was complaining of
/dev/sdb,sdc & sdd not found!)
I have been able to mount my reiserfs, so i can
continue with migration.
Issue which i have to take up with Mandriva guys is
why the failure all of a sudden? and do i need to be
performing losetup everytime? My original
configuration had used whole disks...


_Thanks


--- Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 09:44:22AM -0800, Richard
> Mollel wrote:
> > For some unknown reasons...my LVM PV's which have
> > worked for several years are dropping!
> 
> A simple rule to follow when reporting a problem:
>   Tell people the precise version of the software
> you're using - and the
>   distro!
> 
> And if things suddenly stopped working, tell people
> about anything possibly
> relevant that might have changed recently on the
> system.
> 
> Alasdair
> -- 
> agk@redhat.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> linux-lvm mailing list
> linux-lvm@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
> read the LVM HOW-TO at
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
> 



 
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Re: [linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Luca Berra]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 09:56:22AM -0800, Richard Mollel wrote:
>
>Just before i sent this out...i saw this thread::
>https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2005-May/msg00032.html
>
>And that was exactly my problem!! Not sure why!!
>I have now been able to perform::
>losetup /dev/loop0 /dev/sdb
>losetup /dev/loop1 /dev/sdc
>losetup /dev/loop2 /dev/sdd
>
can you please clarify if you are really using whole disks or did you by
chance partition the devices.
the message you cite was the fix for someone that did partition the disk
after creating the PVs and filling LVM with data.

if the device holds a partition table lvm commands will ignore the
whole disk and try to find an LVM label on the partition.
the loosetup trick will fool lvm tools (loop device are not
partitionable)

>and, performed : vgchange -a y
>(it complained of duplicate uuid's, recreated on
>sdb1,sdc1 and sdd1 since pvcreate was complaining of
>/dev/sdb,sdc & sdd not found!)
pvcreate? did you pvcreate? on the partition?

>I have been able to mount my reiserfs, so i can
>continue with migration.
>Issue which i have to take up with Mandriva guys is
>why the failure all of a sudden? and do i need to be
>performing losetup everytime? My original
>configuration had used whole disks...
>

i did not see anything related to that on mandriva bugzilla, but in any
case if the issue is that the whole device was partitioned after lvm
creation there is not much i can do about it.

L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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Re: [linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0100, Luca Berra wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 09:56:22AM -0800, Richard Mollel wrote:
please ignore, i just found the rest of the thread.

L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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Re: [linux-lvm] my PV's disappearing

[Richard Mollel]

--- Luca Berra <bluca@comedia.it> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 09:56:22AM -0800, Richard
> Mollel wrote:
> >
> >Just before i sent this out...i saw this thread::
>
>https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2005-May/msg00032.html
> >
> >And that was exactly my problem!! Not sure why!!
> >I have now been able to perform::
> >losetup /dev/loop0 /dev/sdb
> >losetup /dev/loop1 /dev/sdc
> >losetup /dev/loop2 /dev/sdd
> >
> can you please clarify if you are really using whole
> disks or did you by
> chance partition the devices.
> the message you cite was the fix for someone that
> did partition the disk
> after creating the PVs and filling LVM with data.
> 
> if the device holds a partition table lvm commands
> will ignore the
> whole disk and try to find an LVM label on the
> partition.
> the loosetup trick will fool lvm tools (loop device
> are not
> partitionable)

Hi Luca,
It created these LVM volumes several years back on
LVM1...and to admit, were my first LVM's experience
then. So, i followed religiously the instructions,
whereby i had to create a partition, label it type
"8e" (LVM) on the partition. For some reason, back
then, i then performed pvcreate on whole device
(/dev/sdb, sdc,sdd) and not their partition. It all
worked OK for years, even after OS upgrade from
Mandrake 10.0 to Mandriva 2006.0, thus changing LVM to
LVM2. Until i ran s fresh pvscan was when i broke the
configuration. It seems to have been working on cache
(/etc/lvm/.cache) configuration, and a pvscan forced a
flush of that.
> 
> >and, performed : vgchange -a y
> >(it complained of duplicate uuid's, recreated on
> >sdb1,sdc1 and sdd1 since pvcreate was complaining
> of
> >/dev/sdb,sdc & sdd not found!)
> pvcreate? did you pvcreate? on the partition?
> 
> >I have been able to mount my reiserfs, so i can
> >continue with migration.
> >Issue which i have to take up with Mandriva guys is
> >why the failure all of a sudden? and do i need to
> be
> >performing losetup everytime? My original
> >configuration had used whole disks...
> >
> 
> i did not see anything related to that on mandriva
> bugzilla, but in any
> case if the issue is that the whole device was
> partitioned after lvm
> creation there is not much i can do about it.
The whole device was partitioned before LVM
creation...
> 
> L.
> 
> -- 
> Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
>         Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
>  /"\
>  \ /     ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
>   X        AGAINST HTML MAIL
>  / \
> 
> _______________________________________________
> linux-lvm mailing list
> linux-lvm@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
> read the LVM HOW-TO at
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
> 



 
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