[gentoo-user] RAID1 + LVM2 booting screwed up. Help, please!

[gentoo-user] RAID1 + LVM2 booting screwed up. Help, please!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

My new(ish) amd64 system has two 1TB HDDs in a (software) RAID1, and
practically the entire system is under an LVM2.

I rather unwisely made this addition to the startup stuff:

    ls -s /usr/bin/svscanboot /etc/init.d/
    rc-update add svscanboot default

, and now the box hangs during boot up.

On the same box, I also have a "trial" installation which boots and I
still have the installation CD from about a year ago.

Would somebody please help me get into my system sufficiently to correct
my mistake on the boot scripts.  Pointing me in the direction of a fine
manual section would be regarded as help.

I feel Dale's reservations in a most painful fashion.

Thanks in advance for the help.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] RAID1 + LVM2 booting screwed up. Help, please!

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 23:11 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Alan Mackenzie 
did opine thusly:

> Hi, Gentoo.
> 
> My new(ish) amd64 system has two 1TB HDDs in a (software) RAID1, and
> practically the entire system is under an LVM2.
> 
> I rather unwisely made this addition to the startup stuff:
> 
>     ls -s /usr/bin/svscanboot /etc/init.d/
>     rc-update add svscanboot default
> 
> , and now the box hangs during boot up.
> 
> On the same box, I also have a "trial" installation which boots and I
> still have the installation CD from about a year ago.
> 
> Would somebody please help me get into my system sufficiently to correct
> my mistake on the boot scripts.  Pointing me in the direction of a fine
> manual section would be regarded as help.

Boot the trial installation which does boot.
vgchange -ay
find and mount your lvm volumes somewhere
now you can access that dodgy symlink to delete it

Maybe there's other steps (like loading kernel modules), but I'm assuming you 
know your way around to find and detect those.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] RAID1 + LVM2 booting screwed up. Help, please!

[Mark Shields]

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On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>wrote:

> Apparently, though unproven, at 23:11 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Alan
> Mackenzie
> did opine thusly:
>
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > My new(ish) amd64 system has two 1TB HDDs in a (software) RAID1, and
> > practically the entire system is under an LVM2.
> >
> > I rather unwisely made this addition to the startup stuff:
> >
> >     ls -s /usr/bin/svscanboot /etc/init.d/
> >     rc-update add svscanboot default
> >
> > , and now the box hangs during boot up.
> >
> > On the same box, I also have a "trial" installation which boots and I
> > still have the installation CD from about a year ago.
> >
> > Would somebody please help me get into my system sufficiently to correct
> > my mistake on the boot scripts.  Pointing me in the direction of a fine
> > manual section would be regarded as help.
>
> Boot the trial installation which does boot.
> vgchange -ay
> find and mount your lvm volumes somewhere
> now you can access that dodgy symlink to delete it
>
> Maybe there's other steps (like loading kernel modules), but I'm assuming
> you
> know your way around to find and detect those.
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>
He should be able to just do an interactive startup.  Press "i" when
prompted, and you should be able to bypass the bad startup item;
alternatively, if you have access to grub boot, you can also try booting
into single user mode.

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Re: [gentoo-user] RAID1 + LVM2 booting screwed up. Help, please!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Alan.

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 11:33:13PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 23:11 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Alan Mackenzie 
> did opine thusly:

> > Hi, Gentoo.

> > My new(ish) amd64 system has two 1TB HDDs in a (software) RAID1, and
> > practically the entire system is under an LVM2.

> > I rather unwisely made this addition to the startup stuff:

> >     ls -s /usr/bin/svscanboot /etc/init.d/
> >     rc-update add svscanboot default

> > , and now the box hangs during boot up.

> > On the same box, I also have a "trial" installation which boots and I
> > still have the installation CD from about a year ago.

> > Would somebody please help me get into my system sufficiently to
> > correct my mistake on the boot scripts.  Pointing me in the direction
> > of a fine manual section would be regarded as help.

> Boot the trial installation which does boot.
> vgchange -ay
> find and mount your lvm volumes somewhere
> now you can access that dodgy symlink to delete it

> Maybe there's other steps (like loading kernel modules), but I'm
> assuming you know your way around to find and detect those.

It turns out I panicked needlessly, since my root partition is on
/dev/sdb1.  I didn't manage to figure out how to get / onto the LVM2 way
back when.  I'm glad I didn't delete the "trial" installation, which I'm
renaming to "rescue" :-).

Thanks for the tip.  I've a feeling I'll be needing vgchange sometime or
other.

> -- 
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).