Recovery Assistance

[John Fico]

I lost my root disk (along with all of the lvm volume information)... I had a
spare drive which I re-installed the OS and have got the system up and
running. Is there anyway to restore the volume information and recover my
external disk without re-defining and restoring the data on those disks. I
have all of the /etc/lvmconf/*.conf files.

[Jason Luginbuhl_1]

vgcfgrestore will use the information in the /etc/lvmconf/* files to recreate
the LVM structures from the previous volume group configuration without
restoring the data. Check the man page on vgcfgrestore for more info.

[Dan_4]

Since you reinstalled the OS, you won't have the original LVM conf files to use vgcfgrestore. If you are talking about recovering disks that are part of a non-VG00 volume group, you can use vgimport.

This can also be done easily through SAM. Just go into disks & filesystems, then Volume Groups. Select IMPORT from the actions menu and it will scan the system for all disks that aren't currently represented in lvmtab and are available for importing.

This will recreate the VG structure and make those VGs part of your new system without modifying the data on the disks.

[Jason Luginbuhl]

Actually, if I understand you correctly, the only disk you lost was the root disk. If you have a good backup of all the filesystems that were on that disk, then all you should have to do is restore these filesystems and then reboot. The lvm configuration files under /etc/ and /dev would then be recovered and the LVM header information that is physcially contained on the disk headers of the LVM disks should remain for all the disks (except the root which you recreated with the reinstall of the OS). In this scenerio, vgimporting or vgcfgrestoring the vg information will not be necessary.

The only caveat to this is your root vg information. If with your reinstall you have defined a differnt root vg configuration then before, then some extra steps will be necessary to restore that root vg to the way it was before.

[Andreas Voss]

Just a comment

For the future:
If you have a DDS-tape drive have a look at Ignite. When you install Ignite you can easily create a disaster backup tape of your system by using the command
make_recovery -A
What you get is a BOOTABLE tape whith all the information and data of the vg00.
So if your disk crashed yust simply replace the disk with a new one, insert the recovery tape and boot from it. The system will be recovered in approx. 1 hour.

Andrew

[Sanjay Tailor]

Hi,
I had the same problem last year. I had HP come and replace the disk. The CE then reloaded the root drive with the install disk. The same situation here. When I restored the root drive using a backup tape, I was told by HP not to restore the /dev directory. They said that since the system was recreted the /dev directory is set up for a new config. That also meant I had to recreate my printers and modems on the system. HP also informed me not to restore the /etc/fstab file. Not sure why, I don't remember.
Hope that helps.
Sanjay.