vgscan -- ERROR -132: volume group "vgall" is inconsistent

Hi there.
I got a incredible lvm inconsistency simply by trying to remove two logical volumes with yast1.
I can exactly describe what I did:

I'm running Suse 7.0 with Kernel 2.2, all partitions are listed below:

lvmdiskscan -- reading all disks / partitions (this may take a while...)

lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda1 [ 10.3 MB] Primary LINUX native
partition [0x83]
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda2 [ 1.9 GB] DOS extended partition [0x5]
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda3 [ 17.18 GB] Primary LVM partition [0x8E]
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda5 [ 1.77 GB] Extended LINUX native
partition [0x83]
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda6 [ 127.45 MB] Extended [0x82]

lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hdc1 [      38.16 GB] Primary  LVM partition [0x8E]
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hdd1 [      76.34 GB] Primary  LVM partition [0x8E]

lvmdiskscan -- 3 disks
lvmdiskscan -- 0 whole disks
lvmdiskscan -- 0 loop devices
lvmdiskscan -- 0 multiple devices
lvmdiskscan -- 0 network block devices
lvmdiskscan -- 7 partitions
lvmdiskscan -- 3 LVM physical volume partitions

pvscan -- reading all physical volumes (this may take a while...) pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hda3" is associated to an unknown VG (run vgscan)
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdc1" is associated to an unknown VG (run vgscan)
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdd1" is associated to an unknown VG (run vgscan)
pvscan -- total: 3 [131.67 GB] / in use: 3 [131.67 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0]

I had a VG called vgall containing /dev/hda3 /dev/hdc1 and /dev/hdd1 with 3 LVs in it
/dev/vgall/music [~120GB]
/dev/vgall/data [~10GB]
/dev/vgall/backup [~10GB]

All three LVs containing reiserfs.

/dev/vgall/data and /dev/vgall/backup were both empty, so I wanted
to remove them.
Therefor I deactivated all three LVs and the VG vgall. Because I was lazy I wanted to remove
the two LVs with yast1. Trying to remove LV data and backup, yast returned an error code.
I quit yast and tried to mount the old LVs, they were unmountable and unremovable:
lvremove -- ERROR: "/etc/lvmtab.d" doesn't exist; please run vgscan

But vgscan leads to:
vgscan -- reading all physical volumes (this may take a while...) vgscan -- found inactive volume group "vgall"
vgscan -- ERROR -132: volume group "vgall" is inconsistent vgscan -- ERROR: unable to do a backup of volume group "vgall" vgscan -- successfully created
vgscan -- WARNING: you may not have an actual backup of your volume group

Unfortunately "/etc/lvmtab" and "/etc/lvmtab.d" still don't exist. pvdata reports a lot of "pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 189 is inconsistent"
on /dev/hda3 and /dev/hdc1. (/dev/hdd1 is ok, there should be the major part of the LV /vgall/music)
When calling the lvm - configurator in yast1, yast quits with a segmentation fault.
What went wrong, and is there any way to save my data at /dev/vgall/music?

Thanks a lot for any comments,
Best Regards,

Andreas Martin.

Hi Andreas.

First of all: if you still have your /etc/lvmconf/vgall.conf and/or /etc/lvmconf/vgall.conf.[0-9*].old in place you have good luck ;-)

Hack to activate your VG agian:

Figure out which one of the above files is a valid metadata backup of your VG. You can achive that by using "vgcfgrestore -ll -n vgall -f /etc/lvmconf/X". Put in one of the above file names for X and check the output for valid PVs and LVs.

If you found the correct one copy it to /etc/lvmtab.d/vgall and do an "echo -ne 'vgall\0' > /etc/lvmtab;vgchange -ay" in order to activate your VG.

The bug you are facing with vgscan should already be fixed with LVM 0.9.1 beta3 which you can get from www.sistina.com.

Cheers,
Heinz

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Heinz Mauelshagen Sistina Software Inc.
Senior Consultant/Developer Am Sonnenhang 11
56242 Marienrachdorf Germany
[email protected] +49 2626 141200

                                                       FAX 924446

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Not all critical bugs from vgscan are gone, however...

...
vg_read_with_pv_and_lv -- AFTER lv_read_all_lv; vg_this->pv_cur: 3 vg_this->pv_max: 256 ret: 0
lvm_error -- LEAVING with: "vg_read_with_pv_and_lv(): allocated LE of LV" vgscan -- ERROR "vg_read_with_pv_and_lv(): allocated LE of LV" can't get data of volume group "vg0" from physical volume(s) lvm_error -- LEAVING with: "vg_read_with_pv_and_lv(): allocated LE of LV"vgscan -- ERROR "vg_read_with_pv_and_lv(): allocated LE of LV" creating "/etc/lvmtab" and "/etc/lvmtab.d"
...

Full debugging output attached to this bug:
http://bugzilla.sistina.com/show_bug.cgi?id=153

regards,

Rik
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