Access Old Home Directory - USB enclosure - LVM
Jim Cornette
fc-cornette at insight.rr.com
Sun Jan 1 02:19:40 UTC 2006
Robert L Cochran wrote:
> Jim Cornette wrote:
>
>> Robert L Cochran wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I recently upgraded my desktop system with a much larger hard drive.
>>> The old hard drive is now in an external hard drive enclosure (the
>>> kind made by Metal Gear Box) and is plugged in to a USB port. The
>>> old drive has these partitions
>>>
>>> Microsoft Windows XP -- 30 Gb
>>> Fedora Core 4 -- 30 Gb
>>>
>>> My problem is, I can see the /boot partition on the drive, but I
>>> cannot see the / (root) partition, and I'm want to get at my former
>>> home directory because I have some files there I forgot to back up.
>>> I'm wondering if that partition was named something like:
>>> '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00' and mounted on /.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help!
>>>
>>> Bob Cochran
>>>
>> You are right that the / partition is contained in the LVM. I believe
>> you need to run lvm and make the partition active, assign a
>> mountpoint for the lvm, then mount the lvm.
>> The label that the old hard drive is using is probably / which is the
>> label most likely used on your newly installed system.
>> I recovered my previous installation using a USB enclosure and
>> activating the LVM. It was a long time back and useful information on
>> activating the LVM was upplied by someone on this list.
>> Adding USB enclosure - LVM to subject.
>>
>> Jim
>>
> Thanks for the insight. This led me to give 'man lvm' a fast glance,
> then I Googled on lvm and found a how-to in the LDP, part of which is
> this:
>
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/recipemovevgtonewsys.html
>
> I'd better explain that in my old system, I had two (2) physical hard
> drives. The first is a 60 Gb drive and this is the drive we are
> discussing below, which is installed in a Metal Gear USB hard drive
> enclosure.
>
> The second drive is a 120 Gb drive which actually represents a former
> Fedora Core system (whether FC2 or FC3, I can't remember.) I built a
> new computer more than a year ago. I bought the 60 Gb drive, divided
> that into a partition for Windows XP and left the rest as unallocated
> free space. I installed Windows, then installed Fedora Core 3. At the
> time I installed FC 3, I decided to plug in the 120 Gb drive as a
> second hard drive. I just thought of it as a way of giving myself
> access to the data on my former system. This was mounted on a
> directory named /mnt/any and seemed to work fine for a long while
> under FC3. The only odd thing is that I couldn't do any compiles with
> gcc from the directories on that drive. I'd get messages about not
> having permission. The directories were named similarly to my current
> home directory. I use /home/rlc on this system, and the old system
> also had /home/rlc when that was active. I then ran FC3 for a long
> time on this system. I upgraded this 2-hard drive system to Fedora
> Core 4. I've only been running FC4 for a few months now.
>
> Now I've done yet a makeover of my hardware. I took out the 60 and 120
> Gb drives and in their place I put in a 400 Gb drive. The old
> motherboard and processor have been replaced too.
>
> Now I realize that my backup DVD doesn't have some files I really
> need. I've quickly put the 60 Gb drive in the drive enclosure and
> plugged it in.
>
> But I'm still confused by my own attempts to bring back my old
> partitions and access those directories. I plugged in the USB cable
> with this result:
>
>
> Dec 31 18:37:16 bobcp4 fstab-sync[21919]: added mount point
> /media/usbdisk for /dev/sdb1
> Dec 31 18:37:17 bobcp4 fstab-sync[21925]: added mount point
> /media/usbdisk1 for /dev/sdb2
>
> Then I did a 'pvscan' to see if I could find the volume group:
>
> [root at bobcp4 ~]# pvscan
> PV /dev/sda2 VG VolGroup00 lvm2 [372.50 GB / 32.00 MB free]
> Total: 1 [372.50 GB] / in use: 1 [372.50 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ]
>
> What we see above is my current active lvm partition. I wonder why the
> swap volume group isn't shown? And there is nothing from
> sdb...puzzling, that.
>
> So on the hard drive I mounted via USB, I would expect to see 4
> partitions when I think about it:
>
> an NTFS partition for Windows XP;
>
> a swap partition;
>
> a /boot partition for FC4;
>
> and a / partition for everything else.
>
> / and swap seems to be missing.
>
> Here is what's in /media/usbdisk. I suspect it is probably Windows XP,
> the NTFS partition:
>
> [root at bobcp4 ~]# ls -al /media/usbdisk
> total 12
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 31 18:37 .
> drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Dec 31 18:37 ..
>
> /media/usbdisk1 looks like /boot:
>
> [root at bobcp4 ~]# ls -al /media/usbdisk1
> total 28262
> drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 14 05:53 .
> drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Dec 31 18:37 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50848 Jun 2 2005 config-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 52480 Sep 28 19:24 config-2.6.13-1.1526_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 52514 Oct 20 01:38 config-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54391 Nov 9 19:16 config-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54413 Nov 27 03:34 config-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54399 Dec 13 21:46 config-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dec 14 05:53 grub
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1948129 Oct 9 12:32 initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1954696 Oct 9 15:20 initrd-2.6.13-1.1526_FC4.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1955846 Oct 20 20:47 initrd-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1917983 Nov 10 16:45 initrd-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1917986 Nov 28 21:12 initrd-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1917769 Dec 14 05:53 initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img
> drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Nov 10 2004 lost+found
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 916318 Jun 2 2005 System.map-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 941697 Sep 28 19:24 System.map-2.6.13-1.1526_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 942036 Oct 20 01:38 System.map-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 958081 Nov 9 19:16 System.map-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 958383 Nov 27 03:34 System.map-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 958892 Dec 13 21:46 System.map-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1951836 Jun 2 2005 vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2020745 Sep 28 19:24 vmlinuz-2.6.13-1.1526_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2021093 Oct 20 01:38 vmlinuz-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1718117 Nov 9 19:16 vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1717815 Nov 27 03:34 vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1713442 Dec 13 21:46 vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4
>
> So, where is everything else?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Bob Cochran
>
I searched the archives for whatever I had to do in order to get the
lvm activated. Here is one posting that I made:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-April/msg01943.html
From an earlier posting someone suggested to run the following commands
to activate and later deactivate LVM volumes in rescue mode. I used
these commands on an external USB drive to get at data from a previous
installation and it worked. You might be able to get at your data in
this way.
Jim
Excerpt from earlier help.
Once booted into text-mode rescue, invoke the following commands:
lvm lvscan
lvm vgchange -ay
This will scan for all LVM volumes and then will make them active and
accessible.
lvm vgchange -an
will deactivate them all.
end Excerpt:
Basically, the LVM volumes on the hard drive from an earlier install was
labeled / for the main partition and this label being the same as my
non-lvm clean install was also labeled /. When the kernel booted and the
saw the same label, it ignored the LVM which contained the / and swap
lvm content.
To access the partition, I ran the lvscan and vgchange commands. I then
had to make a mountpoint under /mnt to mount the LVM partition.
I believe I got the information as /dev-mapper/volgroup00/<whatever> ---
Sorry, I forgot what it is called, I no longer use LVM.
I took that information of where the volume was and used mount
/dev-mapper/volgroup00/<whatever> /mnt/olddrive and was able to access
all the content from the LVM after mounting it. I transferred all of my
desired information from the drive and never used it since.
There might be discussions in march of this year or close to that time
frame in the archives. The helpful person has not posted recently to my
knowledge but knew a lot about dealing with LVMs.
All of your swap partitions and other filesystem dvisions are all
contained in the LVM. The only partitions you should have are the one
for windows, the /boot partition and the third partition should be where
all of the LVM "partitions" or slices are kept. If you ran fdisk on the
/dev/sdb device, you should have three partitions. Without dev-mapper,
it does not show.
Good luck! It is possible, I just cannot remember the exact method that
I used to get at the LVM.
Jim
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