[CentOS] kernel panic after DDing disk to another one + question on LVM

Kai Schaetzl

maillists at conactive.com
Mon Jan 30 15:22:08 UTC 2006


This is a machine in a remote datacenter, so I have no console access to 
it. The machine suddenly went offline, was reset remotely and showed 
several unrecoverable DMA errors when it came up. After a second normal 
reboot (to see if the problem was consistent) it lost several services and 
didn't come up after the third reboot.
After contacting the datacenter the disk got replaced and the old image 
was DDed to the new disk.

The new disk runs into a kernel panic now. I would expect this since the 
DD copies over the existing problems as well.
I do not have any experience with LVM (which CentOS 4.2 uses by default, 
this is only my second test machine for CentOS and my only remote one), so 
I would like to ask if (besides the assumed reason) LVM could also cause 
this problem after cloning the disk to another one. I don't think so but I 
want to be sure.

I have access to a (debian minimal) rescue system which doesn't have LVM, 
so I don't have access to most of the disk (other than /boot), so there's 
not much room for investigation. I plan to use the pxeboot kernel now to 
get it up and reinstall CentOS. My question is will I be able to do this 
or will the pxeboot kernel need to have access to that volume before I 
repartition? Also, can I disable using LVM (I think I don't need it and it 
may create more problems than it helps in my case) before setup starts or 
do I have to do this during setup (I assume I can do this during the 
manual partition phase?)?

Thanks,

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany





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