A long time ago (9.2) I set up a system. Nowadays I’d probably configure it differently* but it is as it is and it has a problem 
It’s a dual-processor xeon and a processor just failed. After removing that processor, the hardware seems to be running OK but I have problems with booting (grub) and with LVM.
These days it runs 10.3 and I’ve managed to boot it via an 11.1 install DVD so the most urgent problem is to fix the LVMs. (apologies if this is a bad place to ask - suggestions for other forums gratefully received - I can’t use email until the LVMs are restored.)
The machine has two 3ware controllers each with a RAID5 set*. Each RAID set is configured as a PV & VG (the whole “drive”*). 3DM2 (the 3ware monitor program) says that both controllers and all drives are working properly. /proc/partitions shows the drives (sda & sdb. sdc is a separate boot disk on the motherboard controller):
cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
8 0 1708908544 sda
8 16 1708908544 sdb
8 32 156290904 sdc
8 33 4200966 sdc1
8 34 73947195 sdc2
8 35 20964825 sdc3
7 0 19768 loop0
7 1 35992 loop1
7 5 48 loop5
7 6 488 loop6
253 0 209715200 dm-0
253 1 1498939392 dm-1
But the LVM tools don’t see anything:
pvscan
No matching physical volumes found
lvmdiskscan
0 disks
0 partitions
0 LVM physical volume whole disks
0 LVM physical volumes
I also ran lvmdiskscan -vvv and the log shows that /dev/sda is skipped:
/dev/sda: Skipping (sysfs)
as indeed is sdb, sdc, sdc2 (the root partition) and seemingly everything else.
I’m stumped! Can anybody suggest my next step?
After a previous hardware failure (the boot disk) I found that one of the LVMs worked while the other one didn’t. That turned out to be because in fixing the boot disk I let grub overwrite the MBR on one of the RAID sets*, and that is part of the PV. Luckily, I was able to restore the LVM metadata to get it working. Out of desperation, I just tried to repeat the procedure now but wasn’t surprised when it failed:
pvcreate --uuid “Fb8U24-BKDl-IOkW-sKxT-VhcW-n274-HnOj40” --restorefile /etc/lvm/backup/backup /dev/sdb
Couldn’t find device with uuid ‘Fb8U24-BKDl-IOkW-sKxT-VhcW-n274-HnOj40’.
Device /dev/sdb not found (or ignored by filtering).
I also haven’t found anything relevant in /var/log/messages or dmesg.
Thanks, Dave
- These things I would probably do differently now:
-
- use kernel RAID instead of hardware
-
- do NOT configure LVMs on the whole drive. Partition it first and use a partition.
-
- be VERY careful when letting tools run grub configuration.