vgimport fails: vg is still active - but in fact is NOT!

[Michelle Daalman_1]

Hell, I have come across a very curious problem which I do not understand.

I am setting up a disaster recovery cluster consisiting of 2 nodes and which is now connected to an EMC. On one node I have vg05, VG11 and vg14 defined in the cluster packages, on the other system vg12. The cluster lock is going to be vg12.

I am performing a vgchange -a n vg11 on Node A and exporting it like this:
vgexport -p -s -m /tmp/vg11.map /dev/vg11

I then copied it to node b and after having created the dir and having done mknod (with the same minor number).

Then I perform a vgimport:
vgimport -s -m /tmp/vg11.map /dev/vg11

it then says: Volume group "/dev/vg11" is still active.

But it is not! I cannot see it on node A, it is deactivated.

But, I didn't give up, I did a complete vgexport of vg11 on node A and tried to import it on node B and guess what? It still says the VG is active!!!

but it doesn't exist anywhere! No, not in any lvmtab or conf file either.

just in /dev/vg05 cause I need to import it on that.

What is the cause? Is EMC storing a conf file somewhere which I need to adjust?

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Michelle:

On node-B verify that you don't have duplicate minor numbers in your device files.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Oleg Zieaev_1]

Hello.

Check this link:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xbde591ccb36bd611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

as you might be missing some of the steps.

Duplicate minor number - agree 100% might be a reason as well.

Hope this helps.
0leg

[Ashwani Kashyap]

YEah , looks like a duplicate minor number issue .

DO an
#ls -al /dev/*/group and see if there are actually any conflicts there .

And EMC doesn't store any conf file , not for this .

[Michelle Daalman_1]

Thanks for your responses.

I already noticed duplicate minor numbers when I did a ll /dev/*/group and I knew I would have to change that by exporting and importing the VG's on both sides (some twice!) I will start from scratch tomorrow.

And build up the cluster again after that.

Hope the problem will be solved then.
If not, I will be here again asking for help:-)

If it works, I will be assigning points!
Thanks so far!

[Jean-Louis Phelix]

Michelle,

You have a VERY good probability to have got correct answers, but :

A - identical minors are the best practice, but are not mandatory. Different minors could speed up your task if you can't export vg on the primary.

B - LVM reads structures from lvmtab at activation, then keeps it in memory. But sometimes it can fail to "release" a volume group at deactivation. In this rare case the minor can't be used anymore until you reboot the system and you have all symptoms of a duplicate minor.

Regards.