[CentOS] Update 4.2 broke LVM

[Kevin Krieser]

On Oct 17, 2005, at 12:23 PM, Kevin Krieser wrote:

> I just came home for lunch to check my system (I did a fresh 4.0  
> install yesterday, downloaded the updates overnight, and applied  
> them this morning).  After the reboot, it failed again.
>
> At least, while it was at 4.0, I was able to backup the entire / 
> home directory to USB disk (this is all personal stuff).
>
> NOT giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about using LVM.  This is  
> supposed to be enterprise ready?


Further study, and I suspect that this problem may be from the  
upstream provider (i.e.  Redhat).

Unfortunately, I can't verify this without reinstalling CentOS4.0 and  
recreating the LVM group.

After the problems with the upgrade to 4.2, which broke my LVM group,  
(and also broken with a fresh install of CentOS 4.2 from DVD, with  
everything formatted but the LVM group), I gave up on this, and  
decided to just have the 2 drives be separate filesystems.   
Unfortunately, I couldn't mount the second had drive.  Got the error  
that /dev/hdg1 was already mounted, or /home2 was busy.  No, I'm  
afraid not.  Note, it showed up in /proc/partitions, I could run  
fdisk on the drive, repartition t, format it, run fsck on it.  Just  
not format it).

My speculation is that LVM was failing because I could not mount a  
normal partition on the drive either.

Testing this last problem, I decided to just try RHEL WS 4.2.  It too  
has the same problem.

And the funny part is that, during the actual install, I can mount  
and write to the partition from virtual console 2.  It is only after  
the install that it is failing, which was the same issue with CentOS  
4.2, where I could look at the LVM group when present during the  
install but not after the install.

2 more notes.  I tried the above when SELinux was at both Warn, and  
when turned off.  Also, when I encountered the problem during a yum  
update, it didn't matter whether I booted the original 4.0 kernel or  
the 4.2 kernel.  So it must have been one of the other packages  
breaking it.

Guess I have 2 options.  Try Fedora, or install 4.2, live without one  
of the drives for awhile, and see if a future upgrade will fix it.   
Too bad I can't report it to Redhat. I no longer have a home license  
with them.