[linux-lvm] my volume group disappeared!

[Dan B. Phung]

Hello all, I'm in desperate need of some assistance.  I
used to have 2 volume groups, big_cheese and lil_cheesy1.


  blade01:phung # vgscan
    Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
    Found volume group "lil_cheesy1" using metadata type lvm2
    Found volume group "big_cheese" using metadata type lvm2

but I've been messing with my GFS configuration and rebooting
"spontaneously" (to test the locking setup I have), and now
I'm missing one of my beloved volume groups!


  blade01:phung # vgscan
    Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
    Found volume group "lil_cheesy1" using metadata type lvm2


This is an IBM fastT500/EXP500 SAN, so I can login using their
SMclient facility and I see that the array is still correctly 
configured, and I do see the /dev/sda where the data lives, 
and I can fdisk that device to see my array, but the physical
volume also seems to be missing!

  blade01:phung # pvs
    PV         VG          Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
    /dev/sdb   lil_cheesy1 lvm2 a-   68.32G 68.32G

any help would be much appreciated.
- dan