{"id":562,"date":"2012-02-29T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T02:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kb.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb-articles\/how-to-work-with-linux-lvm-volumes-on-the-ifl-boot-disk\/"},"modified":"2021-09-07T15:04:41","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T22:04:41","slug":"how-to-work-with-linux-lvm-volumes-on-the-ifl-boot-disk","status":"publish","type":"lsvr_kba","link":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/kb-articles\/how-to-work-with-linux-lvm-volumes-on-the-ifl-boot-disk\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Work With Linux LVM Volumes On The IFL Boot Disk"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article covers LVM (Linux Volume Manager) topics relevant to IFL and
the IFL Boot Disk. The aticle is divided into 2 sections:

Section 1: Working with LVM volumes on the IFL Boot Disk
Section 2: Creating and restoring images of LVM volumes

This document applies to any LVM type for use with IFL. However, starting \r\nwith
version 3.22, the TeraByte Drive Imaging suite directly supports \r\ndata-only
backup\/restore of LVM's that contain a single PV with logical\r\nvolumes that consist
of consecutive blocks within the LVM partition. If\r\nspanned or striped logical
volumes exist, the entire LVM partition will \r\nbe backed up raw as were all LVM
partitions prior to 3.22.

Section 1: Working with LVM volumes on the IFL Boot Disk:<\/strong>

By default, the IFL boot disk will not activate any LVM volumes. LVM volumes
can always be activated manually from the running disk by using the command
'start-lvm' from the Linux prompt, and can then be deactivated by using the
command 'stop-lvm'.

Activating LVM volumes (if any exist on the system) will create a device file
for each LVM volume in \/dev\/mapper. Those devices files can be viewed with the
command 'ls -l \/dev\/mapper'. Once activated, LVM volumes can then be mounted
(assuming they contain a mountable file system) with commands such as:

mount \/dev\/mapper\/vg0-lvol0 \/mnt  -> mount logical volume 0 in volume group 0
mount \/dev\/mapper\/vg0-lvol1 \/mnt  -> mount logical volume 1 in volume group 0

Note that before LVM volumes can be manually deactivated with the 'stop-lvm'
command, any mounted LVM volumes must first be unmounted. This situation is
handled automatically when rebooting or powering down.

The IFL Boot Disk can be configured to automatically activate LVM volumes
on boot. This feature is enabled by creating a custom version of the IFL boot
media with the makeISO\/HDD\/PXE scripts. The option to activate LVM will
appear on the IFL Boot Media Settings menu, as well as on the Restore Disc
Settings menu. With LVM Activation enabled, you will see a message to that
effect on boot, and it will not be necessary to manually activate LVM as
described above. However, the 'start-lvm' and 'stop-lvm' commands can still be
used as needed.

Note than when using makeHDD or makePXE to create a custom version, the \/c
option must be used. Otherwise, the script will create the default version of
the IFL boot media, and the settings menu will not appear. The \/c option is
not required when running makeISO, since that script always creates a custom
version.

The complete LVM program is available on the IFL Boot Disk, so that commands
such as 'lvdisplay' and 'vgdisplay' can be used. All of the LVM programs can
be listed by typing 'lvm' at the prompt. For additional information on LVM,
please refer to the man pages available on any Linux system with LVM installed.
The following web site may also be helpful: http:\/\/sourceware.org\/lvm2

As an example, one of the more useful LVM commands is 'lvdisplay', which will
list all detected LVM volumes on the system, with an output similar to the
following:

ifl:\/tbu# lvdisplay
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                \/dev\/vg1\/lvol0
  VG Name                vg1
  LV UUID                3UnE6T-ef0k-SaYe-C8ZX-D711-TRxy-vfJksa
  LV Write Access        read\/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                336.00 MB
  Current LE             84
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           252:0

  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                \/dev\/vg1\/lvol1
  VG Name                vg1
  LV UUID                AwGwjm-ud2j-4ABE-lyvn-hPs3-k233-3ZJQ9r
  LV Write Access        read\/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                336.00 MB
  Current LE             84
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           252:1
<\/font>
Each section represents an LVM volume, and gives the size of each LVM, as
well as the volume group (vg1 in this case) that each LVM belongs to. The
command 'blkid' can be used to display additional information about LVMs,
such as the file system they are formatted with, the volume label, the
UUID, and the block device number.


Section 2: Creating and restoring images of LVM volumes:<\/strong>
<\/p>\r\n

IFL supports creating and restoring images to\/from individual LVM volumes.
In addition, images created from LVM volumes can be restored to hard drive
partitions, and images created from partitions can be restored to LVM volumes
(assuming they will fit).

Important: The support for LVMs in IFL is limited to creating and restoring
individual LVM volumes with the requirement that the underlying LVM structures
(LVM volume groups, LVM physical volumes) already exist. To be able to do a
complete restore from scratch of a drive containing one or more  LVMs, you
would need to create an image of the entire hard drive, and then restore that
image.

Once LVMs have been activated on the IFL Boot Disk, the IFL program will
recognize the LVM volumes as drives, and they will appear in the list of
drives that IFL displays (e.g. \/dev\/mapper\/vg0-lvol0). LVMs are not
partitioned, but for imaging purposes, IFL will treat them as a drive with
a single partition.

Creating or restoring an image of an LVM to\/from an LVM is done in the same
way as you would create or restore an image of a hard drive partition
to\/from a hard drive.

Restoring an image of an LVM to a hard drive partition can be done by
selecting ONLY the LVM volume itself to restore. In other words, make sure
that the LVM "full drive" is not selected when you restore the image. From
the command line, an example would look similar to the following:

imagel --r --d:l2@0x1 --f:"\/mnt\/lvmimage.tbi" --sp:0x1 --vb

The command line above is restoring the specified image file to the 1st
partition on Linux drive 2 (--d:l2@0x1). The --sp:0x1 is telling IFL to
restore ONLY the LVM volume itself, rather than the "full drive". The
--sp:0x1 indicates a single partition with partition ID=1. Images of LVMs
will always contain just a single "partition".

Restoring an image of a single partition to an LVM is done in the same
manner as restoring it to a partiton.

Restoring a single partition from a full drive image to an LVM can be done
by selecting ONLY that one partition to restore. From the command line, an
example would look similar to the following:

imagel --r --d:l2@0x1 --f:"\/tbu\/sdbfulldrive" --sp:0x2 --vb

The command above is restoring a single partition with ID=0x2 from the
specified full drive image file to Linux drive 2 (--d:l2@0x1), which is
the LVM. Note that is restoring to the 1st "partition" in the LVM (0x1).

<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article covers LVM (Linux Volume Manager) topics relevant to IFL and the IFL Boot Disk. The aticle is divided into 2 sections:Section 1: Working with LVM volumes on the IFL Boot DiskSection 2: Creating and restoring images of LVM volumesThis document applies to any LVM type for use with IFL. However, starting with version […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"lsvr_kba_cat":[1814],"lsvr_kba_tag":[2123],"class_list":["post-562","lsvr_kba","type-lsvr_kba","status-publish","hentry","lsvr_kba_cat-faq-image-for-linux","lsvr_kba_tag-image-for-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/lsvr_kba"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6332,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/562\/revisions\/6332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_cat?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_tag?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}