[linux-lvm] LVM VG is not activated during system boot

[Stuart Gathman]

On 03/19/2015 02:34 PM, MegaBrutal wrote:
> Now I think I figured out what's going on. It seems to be
> Debian/Ubuntu specific, but I post here, maybe Debian/Ubuntu devs are
> here and see this.
>
> Bug report:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1396213
>
> What actually makes the VG activation so long is that I have a
> snapshot. Activating the snapshot takes very long, and bringing up the
> entire VG takes about 5 minutes. This wouldn't be such a big problem,
> as I could just patiently wait for the activation (with rootdelay).
> But it seems something (maybe some kind of watchdog) kills vgchange
> before it could finish bringing up all VGs. I had the fortune to boot
> a developmental Vivid, and I've seen some 'watershed' messages stating
> that 'vgchange' was killed because it was taking "too long". If we'd
> let 'vgchange' to finish properly, I had the 2nd VG activated
> properly, which contains my root FS.
>
> It's a server. If it has a long boot time, so be it, it doesn't get
> rebooted often anyway during normal circumstances. But it is required
> to boot up without user interaction, e.g., when I issue a reboot
> remotely. The main problem is that currently, user interaction is
> necessary to pass initrd (as the root VG needs to be manually
> activated), which means, I can only reboot the server when I'm
> physically near.
I've had the same problem on Fedora - so it is not ubuntu specific. On 
Fedora, systemd has a timeout for VG activation.  That can be 
increased.  However, you can flag the snapshot to *not* be activated 
automatically (Skip activation: -k) at volume group activation. That 
allows the system to boot (remote reboot), and then you can manually 
activate the big snapshot (or automatically in a later script) - waiting 
the requisite 5 or 10 minutes.