It is important to understand the concepts involved when trying to troubleshoot an LVM problem. Each LVM disk (a non-bootable LVM disk) layout has the following components:
--- Physical Volume Reserve Area (PVRA) ---
--- Volume Group Reserve Area (VGRA) ----
--- User Data Area ---
--- Bad Block Relocation Pool (BDRA) ---
When you manually run vgcfgrestore, or when it is run by default when executing any LVM command, a copy of the disk headers PVRA and VGRA are written to the /etc/lvmconf directory. If there is ever a problem suspected of the actual LVM disk headers on the physical disk, vgcfgrestore is the primary tool used to recover those disk headers from /etc/lvmconf back to disk. If your headers are corrupted and you do not have a good backup in /etc/lvmconf... you are SOL. The only other option (sort of... see below) is to find a good backup from your daily system backups.
Now the /etc/lvmtab file is simply an ASCII file used to keep track of your LVM configuration. You do not need it to run your system. However, almost all LVM commands use the contents of this file when they execute. This is why this file must be present and kept up-to-date. If you suspect an incomplete, corrupt or out-of-date /etc/lvmtab file, rebuilding it with vgscan is the way to go. Error messages from LVM commands can be simply an indication of an incomplete (or corrupt) ASCII file like lvmtab and not a problem with the LVM disk itself.
As far as the message from Ignite relating to an invalid LVMREC on physical volume /dev/rdsk/c3t1d3... not knowing how Ignite is coded... probably refers to the PVRA of that disk. What you need to determine is vg11 a volume group you want to keep on your system? What do you know of this volume group?
If you cannot do without vg11, and you need the data in that vg then you will need to get back those headers. Like I said before, if your LVM headers that are backed up in /etc/lvmconf are corrupt and you cannot find a good backup, you are SOL.... except for the last resort commands, vgexport and vgimport. vgexport will completely remove the VG from the LVM configuration and vgimport will add them back into the LVM configuration by reading the headers from the disk. It will also back up a good copy of the headers to /etc/lvmconf and add it to your /etc/lvmtab file. The successful completion of vgimport is entirely dependent on its being able to read the LVM disk headers.
I know this was a lot of information and I hope that I did not bore you, but my attempt was to give you an understanding of some of these concepts that are oftentimes misunderstood.
Tony
