Mondo? http://www.mondorescue.org -- Mike Burger http://www.bubbanfriends.org "It's always suicide-mission this, save-the-planet that. No one ever just stops by to say 'hi' anymore." --Colonel Jack O'Neill, SG1 > Does anybody here have any idea how to make an exact copy of a drive > that has LVM partitions? I'm having trouble using dd to do this for an > EL5 server. > > We're trying to diagnose a software problem of some kind and would like > an exact, perfect copy of the software running so that we can see > exactly what the problem is without disturbing our production copy. It's > been admin practice to set up a single server with the ideal image as > desired, and then use DD to replicate that image to multiple hosts. > We've done this a large number of times. The exact procedure followed is: > > -) Perform typical file-level backups with rsync > -) Install additional HDD (hereafter sdb) as least a big as the HDD to > be duplicated. > -) Boot off a CentOS install DVD with "linux rescue" > -) Where /dev/sda is the original drive and /dev/sdb is the new drive, > run: > dd bs=8192 if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb; > -) shutdown the server upon completion of the previous command and > remove 2nd drive. > > Hereafter, using systems NOT running lvm, we have a bootable drive that > can be installed into a 2nd machine and generally expect things to "just > work" after sorting out a few driver issues. (EG: /dev/eth#s change) > Following this exact procedure with partitions on LVM does NOT result in > a booting system! > > -) When booting from the newly imaged drive, it starts the boot just > fine but quits at: > ---------------------------- > Activating logical volumes > Volume group "VolGroup00" not found > Trying to resume from /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 > Unable to access resume device (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01) > Creating root device. > Mounting root filesystem. > mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root' > --SNIP-- > switchroot: mount failed: no such file or directory > Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! > ---------------------------- > > > -) Running Linux rescue, at the shell: > ---------------------------- > # pvscan > PV /dev/sda2 VG VolGroup00 lvm2 [153.28 GiB / 0 free] > Total: 1 [153.28 GiB] / inuse: 1 [153.28 GiB] / in no VG: [0 ] > # vgscan > Reading all physical volums. This may take a while... > Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2 > # lvscan > inactive '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00' [151.31 GiB] inherit > inactive '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01' [1.97 GiB] inherit > ---------------------------- > > -) Running the EL5 installer with the "Find distro" option on mounts the > install at /tmp/sysimage without issue. > > What am I missing?!?! > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >