Hello! Kind of FAQ possibly, but I read several mails from the list archives, but did not make it yet. Situation: - machine with four harddisks, running "Debian testing" - conventional root partition - all other partitions LVs - one VG, several LVs inside (/usr, /var, /home, ...) - PVs, VGs and LVs have been created, changed, expanded and used with LVM v1.0.x - machine running with kernel 2.4.21 (LVM compiled in) normally Some days ago one harddisk died, afterwards I did the following: - installed Linux onto empty harddisk (lets call it "rescue hd" ("Debian unstable" including LVM 2.0) - Removed broken harddisk from machine, installed rescue harddisk with newly installed Linux instead to boot from it. - LVM2 finds volume group and reports one disk missing. I do have an backup, but I'd like to save some recent files like my mail inbox. Therefore I'd like to activate the volume group with one disk missing. Manual pages and mailing list seem to say this should be possible. I will have an replacement disk tomorrow or the day after. If that is the only way I'll have to wait. But I would like to start without it. I tried just activating with "vgchange -P -ay", but I get some working and some missing LVs after that (that is: only some device files get created within /dev/<vgname>/). dmsetup prints information for the corresponding mappings. Device files for all LVs get created in /dev/mapper/, but dmsetup prints information only for the working LVs, not for the missing ones. Reading the manual page for lvm about -P option I've learned I should use dmsetup to initialize /dev/ioerror. Some answers would help me making my next guesses and tries more aimed: - Do I have to setup /dev/ioerror manually before using LVM commands like "vgchange -P -ay"? - If yes: How do I do it? "dmsetup create /dev/ioerror <tablefile>" complained about device does not exist or something like this. - Is there a way to find out which LV used the broken disk and how much PEs one LV had on the broken disk? - Is there a way to activate the VG (read only is enough) before inserting a new harddisk? Thanks Florian _______________________________________________ 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/