fsck.ext3: no such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mapper

[Ravi S. Banda]

multipath_conf and PVSCAN Results.docx

[Gerardo Arceri]

You previosuly said that you were using PowerPath right ?

Please post the output of the following commands,preferably in text files:
pvs
vgs
lvs
vgscan
powermt display dev=all

Try to replace your last three "/dev/mapper/Volume15-XXXX lines" on fstab with
/dev/Volume15/XXXX, and add ",_netdev" right besides the default keyword on the fourth column, so for example
/dev/mapper/Volume15-Stageing /u06 ext3 defaults 1 2
becomes
/dev/mapper/Volume15/Stageing /u06 ext3 defaults,_netdev 1 2

Reboot and you should be able to see the logical volume mounted

[Matti_Kurkela]

If the VG has been exported, the "export" status has been written to the VG header on the disks, so rebooting won't change the status of the VG.

An exported VG cannot be activated, so the VG most likely isn't active on any other system. The system startup will attempt to activate all the VGs it sees, but it will *not* auto-import any exported VGs.

(If you know about exporting VGs on HP-UX, don't even try to apply that to Linux; "exporting a VG" is very different on Linux LVM2.)

If all the PVs belonging to this VG are available, the problem can probably be fixed by simply importing the VG, then activating it:

vgimport VolGroup15
vgchange -a y VolGroup15

Exporting a VG is always a manual sysadmin action: the system never does it on its own. It might be important to find out who did export this VG and why. In HP-UX, exporting a VG is a valid substitute for removing it, and exporting is actually easier to do. So someone who has originally learned LVM on HP-UX might have mistakenly applied HP-UX procedures on Linux here.

But the fact that the system is trying to run fsck on the LV(s) of this VG indicates that the removal procedure was not complete: before removing the VG, all the references to its LVs should have been removed from the /etc/fstab file. Whoever did the exporting, may have simply exported a wrong VG by mistake... so there might be remains of another incompletely-removed VG somewhere on your system, which should be properly cleaned up.

MK

[Ravi S. Banda]

Points assigned. Thanks for your help. Since only one file system is affected and we have backups of it, we decided to restore from the backups.

Thanks!
Ravi.