Thanks B-o-b - replies are inline. > From: Mr. B-o-B [mailto:mkebob1134 at netscape.net] > Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 9:39 AM > > Jeff Jensen wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I really messed up LVM on my backup server. I'm really out of my depth > with > > this, and seriously need help. I've been trying to figure it out the > past > > few hours. I know what I did, but not sure if I did what I intended > nor how > > to correct it. > > > > Currently the system won't boot (Fedora 11). I can boot the install CD > and > > use Rescue System option to get a shell. Files et al are there. > > > > The system was low on space, so I added a new drive. It already had 3 > > drives, so I intended to move extents from 2 drives to the new drive so > I > > can remove the 2 drives. I believe I successfully moved them using the > > Partition Manager tool. Too easy in fact! > > > > I think you might have made the big mistake here. Did you plan on > adding the new drive as part of the LV, or just have it as a stand alone > drive? Simply copying the data for the two drive to the new third, > yanking out the former two, and rebooting is a bad deal. > > To take a disk out of service it must first have all of its active > physicalextents moved to one or more of the remaining disks in the > volume group. There must be enough free physical extents in the > remaining PVs to hold the extents to be copied from the old disk. Yep, I added the drive to the LV before I moved the extents. I moved all PEs from each of the two drives to the new drive. The old drives are 40G each and the new drive is 1T. Summary of the steps I did: - First, I used fdisk to add a partition of type LV to the new drive. - Then, I used the GUI to add it to the LV. There may have been an "initialize it" step (button click) in there too; can't remember at this point. - After that, I used the GUI to move each drives' extents to the new drive. When it was done, the GUI showed 2 sections of extents on the new drive (and a whole lotta unallocated space!), and no extents on the original 2. - So then I removed the 2 old drives from the LV. This left the new drive and the boot drive in the LV. - Finally, I edited the properties of the LV to claim the rest of the space on the new drive. It all seemed to go well; I am surprised at the current state. I really thought I did each step carefully. :-( If I boot to the rescue mode, I see all the files. Stuff is intact... These are the /dev/sd* items: - sda1 is /boot. fdisk still shows it as the only one marked bootable. - sda2, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1 are/were in LV. - sdd1 is the new drive. - sdb1 and sdc1 are the two drives I moved PEs to sdd1, and removed them from the LV. > Here is a small exerp from the LVM-HOW to Thanks - I did read this too! [snip] > > I then removed the 2 drives from the LV and rebooted. It fails of > course - > > I see the POST, then some initial messages, and then it hangs with a > blank > > screen. > > > > I've reviewed lvm CLI commands, looked at statuses, and even tried > restoring > > from the automatically created LVM archive files (vgcfgrestore). I'm > not > > sure that that works from the shell, as when I reboot again (not using > the > > rescue), the lvm cfg is the same (pvdisplay). > > Everything works from the shell, and IMHO it is the gui tool that lead > you to trouble. > > > > > Does anyone have suggestions on how to proceed to fix this? > > try this: > > REPLACING PHYSICAL VOLUMES > vgdisplay --partial --verbose will show you the UUIDs and sizes of > any PVs > that are no longer present. If a PV in the VG is lost and you wish to > substitute another of the same size, use > pvcreate --restorefile filename --uuid uuid (plus additional arguments as > appropriate) to initialize it with the same UUID as the missing PV. > Repeat for all other missing PVs in the VG. Then use > vgcfgrestore --file filename to restore the volume group's metadata. The output of "vgdisplay --partial --verbose" looked good - all are present read/write. I can cd around many dirs, cat files, etc. and it all looks good. I'm no sysadmin, but not quite the noob either! ;-) I really don't know how to proceed other than reimage it. But that seems a big waste of time as all the files are there... (and I have BackupPC and other stuff setup I really don't have time or interest in redoing!!)