Volume Group with 4 HDs- one crashed

Hello ,

I'm having a hard time with LVM, in my PC I have setup a VG with 4 harddisks, and one of the HDs crashed. Well, I know I should have backed up the data,
which I did, but the backup is far too old. You know how hard it is to backup big big HDs/partitions w/o having bunches of backup media. Anyway, I have consulted Heinz, who was so kind pointing to LVM2, with its help it should have been possible to mount the VG partially. What I did was:

1. upgrade my kernel, so I could use the device-mapper, which is important for LVM2
2. installed LVM2
3. tried "vgchange -P -ay", which gave me following output:

even vgscan did not help:

: # LVM2.1.95.12/tools/lvm vgscan -v
Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices
Wiping internal cache
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Finding all volume groups
Finding volume group "data"
Found volume group "data" using metadata type lvm1
Finding volume group "mpeg"
3 PV(s) found for VG mpeg: expected 4
Volume group "mpeg" not found

: # mount -a
mount: special device /dev/mpeg/mp3 does not exist
mount: special device /dev/mpeg/movie does not exist

VG "data" is a VG on different SCSI-HDs (which is backed up on a reg basis... anyway this VG was never touched, as it didnt crash).

I also remove the devnodes left by LVM 1 (/dev/mpeg/mp3 /dev/mpeg/mpvie), but still I cant access the VG's.

What to do next? Any help is really appreciated, as there is still lots of important data on the VGs.

Thanks

Regards,
 nik-da-3'9''
 mailto:[email protected]

So did that not activate 2 of the logical volumes?

You have to add '-P' to *every* tool that you want to attempt to use volume groups that are Partially missing. (But tools only support the flag where it makes sense to.)

So it found that OK.

Recent LVM2 tarballs deal OK with any nodes left behind like that. What version are you using?

Read the -P section of 'man lvm' for extra hints on recovery: depends if you're able to replace the disk with another, or if you want to remove the disk from the VG completely.

See also the thread a few days back:
Re: [linux-lvm] problem

Alasdair

[email protected]

Ah you said: .12
That change went into .13

vgdisplay wouldn't show them because you didn't add -P

Do a 'vgchange -an -P' and then try activating them again.

Try 'lvdisplay -P' to check if they're active, or check the attr. columns (see man page) in the new 'lvs -P' command.

Alasdair

[email protected]