[linux-lvm] help: can't read name(s) of physical volumes (Debian kernel weirdness also involved)

[Patrick Caulfield]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 08:53:21PM -0500, Daniel J Hannum wrote:
> Hi. I feel dumb for subscribing to the list just so I can yell out my
> problem and hopefully someone can help, but I'm at the end of my rope
> here.
> 
> Here's the situation. I just installed Debian 3.0 testing and I set it up
> so that I was using their lvm10 package (version 1.0.4-6) for /usr, /var
> /home, etc. (NOT /) It works fine off the kernel that Debian uses in its
> install (2.4.18-bf2.4). BUT, if I install a stock Debian kernel with
> apt-get (kernel-image-2.4.18-k7), lvm cannot see my physical volumes at
> boot-time.

The stock debian kernel has devfs compiled into it. :( 
So if you look in /proc/partitions it will show devfs device names
rather than the "traditional" ones, although the devfs names are not
actually avaiable to you. This confuses LVM.

What you will need to do is to mount devfs at boot time (devfs=mount on
the kernel command-line) on /dev and run devfsd (apt-get install devfsd) and 
things should work.

-- 

patrick