The great disappearing volume group - where did it go

[Mike Smith_33]

I created a volume group one day last week. I created a logical volume on the volume group and it had been all set up and working for a few days with data on the lvol. On last night I rebooted the box and wonder of wonders, my lvol and my volume group are both gone.

The files in /dev/vg05_dev/ rvol1 and lvol1 are still there. The group file is there as well. Yet when I look in SAM the volume group is gone and the logical volume is gone. When I try to mount it, the system says "No such device or address"

What gives?

[Denver Osborn · Accepted solution]

Is the volume group active? open a shell and...

see if the vg is activated
# vgdisplay /dev/vg05_dev

if it is not, activate it
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg05_dev

If you are able to manually activate it, then chances are the lvmrc has AUTO_VG_ACTIVATE set to 0. You will need to add vg05_dev to the lvmrc if you want it activated at boot.

If the above doesn't help, then please post the output from 'strings /etc/lvmtab' and 'vgchange -a y /dev/vg05_dev'


-denver

[Mel Burslan]

can you still see the physical device that the disappearing vg was created upon and is it still accesible ? Althought this is not enough reason for a vg to play the disappearing act.

make sure in any application's shutdown sequence, there is no such thing as a vgexport command sweeping your new vg name during its execution. I have seen very strange application starters so, beware.

[Torsten.]

The system is not able to find the disk.
A broken connection or disk?
New zones in SAN? Different security settings?
Some more details, please.

[Denver Osborn]

sorry... lvmrc as in "/etc/lvmrc"

[melvyn burnard]

so what happens if you do:
vgchange -a y vg05_dev

Is this system part of a Serviceguard cluster?
If so, then it should have the auto activation of VG's at boot time turned OFF.
Check /etc/lvmrc and look at what AUTO_VG_ACTIVATE is set to

[Mike Smith_33]

The solution was in the lvmrc file. This volume group had not been added by me. I must assume that SAM had put the others in there as this is the first I had done manually all the way through. It was a serviceguard cluster and has definitely shown me I need to get training on serviceguard. The devil is in the details.

Thanks all for your replies!