Sanjay Arora spake the following on 10/24/2006 3:21 PM:
I installed a Centos 4.x system using a lvm install across four HDDs. It is my first install using LVM. System had a power-failure and stopped booting up. A new trainee simply took out the HDDs and restarted the file-server on a fresh HDDs.
Now the problemis that the four HDDs have data. But the order of the HDDs (of install....1st primary, 2nd primary etc.) is unknown. Earlier we used to boot with knoppix live cd and recover data through rsync. Knoppix is not automatically recognizing lvm partitions.
My query is to ask for step by step instructions on finding & mounting my lvm partitions correctly using knoppix or installing earlier hdds one by one in the new file-server & restoring data to users. Pointers on any howtos or detailed examples of recovery would also be appreciated.
With best regards. Sanjay.
I think LVM should be able to find the data through its metafiles. You probably have some corruption that killed it in the first place. That is one of LVM's failings. Knoppix will not automatically mount LVM, but you should be able to boot in rescue mode from your centos cd. The easiest way to see what drive was which would be to look at the drives set as master. One will have 2 partitions, and the other will have one. The one with 2 partitions is the primary master. The slaves will be a crapshoot if you aren't sure, but LVM should be able to mount them if they aren't corrupt. I haven't seen any foolproof rescue disks for LVM yet, but look for something with EVMS on it. I think systemrescuecd http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page might help you, but don't hold me to it. You might try something like this http://aplawrence.com/Linux/lvm.html next time for a little more safety.