Dear All, I am trying to set up a volume managed file system over ordinary files using the loopback devices. However whatever I try seems to work until I try and actually use any logical volumes as file systems. Otherwise the volume management system is completely happy with what I have done according to the various display utilities What am I doing wrong? As a simple example of this problem see below (all on a Redhat 9.0 system, Kernel 2.4.20-9 - also fails in the same way on a Redhat 8 system with a 2.4.18 kernel) [root@dex root]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/diskfile0 bs=512M count=1 1+0 records in 1+0 records out [root@dex root]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/diskfile1 bs=512M count=1 1+0 records in 1+0 records out [root@dex root]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/diskfile2 bs=512M count=1 1+0 records in 1+0 records out [root@dex root]# losetup /dev/loop0 /tmp/diskfile0 [root@dex root]# losetup /dev/loop1 /tmp/diskfile1 [root@dex root]# losetup /dev/loop2 /tmp/diskfile2 [root@dex root]# pvcreate /dev/loop[0-2] pvcreate -- physical volume "/dev/loop0" successfully created pvcreate -- physical volume "/dev/loop1" successfully created pvcreate -- physical volume "/dev/loop2" successfully created [root@dex root]# vgcreate test_vg /dev/loop[0-2] vgcreate -- INFO: using default physical extent size 4 MB vgcreate -- INFO: maximum logical volume size is 255.99 Gigabyte vgcreate -- doing automatic backup of volume group "test_vg" vgcreate -- volume group "test_vg" successfully created and activated [root@dex root]# lvcreate -L768M -n test_lv test_vg lvcreate -- doing automatic backup of "test_vg" lvcreate -- logical volume "/dev/test_vg/test_lv" successfully created [root@dex root]# mke2fs /dev/test_vg/test_lv mke2fs 1.32 (09-Nov-2002) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 98304 inodes, 196608 blocks 9830 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 6 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16384 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 33 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override. [root@dex root]# mkdir /mnt/tmp [root@dex root]# mount /dev/test_vg/test_lv /mnt/tmp mount: you must specify the filesystem type [root@dex root]# mount -t ext2 /dev/test_vg/test_lv /mnt/tmp mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/test_vg/test_lv, or too many mounted file systems [root@dex root]# e2fsck /dev/test_vg/test_lv e2fsck 1.32 (09-Nov-2002) Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks... e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/test_vg/test_lv The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> [root@dex root]# Cheers Mark Neil Imperial College London _______________________________________________ linux-lvm mailing list linux-lvm@sistina.com http://lists.sistina.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/