How to reduce logical volume size?

[sassou]

Hi all,

In order to reuse space in one FS we did the following:

1) we reduced the logical volume size of /dev/vgora/lvoracle (from 10Go to 3Go)

#unmount /dev/vgora/lvoracle
#lvreduce -L 3000 /dev/vgora/lvoracle
# mount /dev/vgora/lvoracle /oracle
vxfs mount: /dev/vgora/lvoracle is corrupted. needs checking
# fsck /dev/vgora/lvoracle
fsck: /etc/default/fs is used for determining the file system type
file system is larger than device
vxfs fsck: cannot initialize aggregate
file system check failure, aborting ...

Can anyone help us to fix this issue?
Many thanks

Kuzo

[Marco Santerre]

I'll admit I'm not one that's fond of reducing FS..

In your case though, if you do have a backup I would simply re-create the whole LV and FS and restore from your backup.

As per the man page on lvreduce : The lvreduce command on a logical volume containing a file system of greater length than the size being reduced to will cause data corruption.

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Kuzo,

Do you have a backup of that filesystem ?

If yes,

# umount /dev/vgora/lvoracle
# newfs -F vxfs /dev/vgora/rlvoracle
# mount /dev/vgora/lvoracle

restore the data to the filesystem.

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[KapilRaj]

I hv done this .. and i think naveej could help u to resolve this.if u know where the PE's were before try to lvextend the lvol to thata disk and see if it has used the same pe's and then do an fsck and mount it ...

do u hv an old lvdisplay o/p it will help u to do this..

Kaps

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Kuzo,

You will have to have OnlineJFS to reduce a filesystem.

Without onlineJFS and with your way of reducing filesystem causes data loss which has happened now.

You will need to recreate the filesystem and restore the data. You can try to revert back with "lvextend -L old_size /dev/vgora/lvoracle" and then "fsck /dev/vgora/lvoracle" (no extendfs later). But there is no guarantee.

-Sri

[Helen French]

The best way to reduce the size of a LV and FS is to backup the data and recreate the LV and create new FS on it. If you have OnlineJFS, that will help you in a better way. In that case, you can first resize and rearrange your file system and then do a lvreduce.

Since you didn't use OnlineJFS, your file system was never reduced and thus the lvreduce might have corrupted the file system. Now, all you can do is to recreate the file system (newfs) and check it with fsck. If everything is okay, mount it and restore the data.

[Rita C Workman]

...follow the advice above and get yourself back to where you were (hope you backed up and the tape is good !)....

..and if you want to adjust things, consider that pvmove mentioned in the other thread. It is far better to move things around, than to reduce....

Rgrds,
Rita

[Mark Grant]

Just to clarify what others have said above though trying to make it absolutely clear what went wrong here.

You reduced the size of the logical volume without reducing the filesystem first. Thats a bit like cutting a piece of paper in half and wondering where half the writing has gone.

[SIJU JOSE]

Hi

I feel if you need to recreate the filesystem with newfs and then do fsck

#newfs -F vxfs /dev/vgora/rlvoracle

HTH

Siju Jose

[iminus]

In HP-UX, lvreduce is dangerous, as it doesn't arrange your data which you might have data loss. I can't find a command that can restructure the filesystem before reduce it, so, it's better to create a brand new filesystem, copy your current one (if you can restore) over, then remove the current one so that you can reserve the space.