Recovering volume group metadata in LVM with UUID disk #CentOS_6_RHEL

Objective: Recover volume group metadata in LVM.

Environment: CentOS_6.3 (32-bit)

LVM version: 2.02.95

Brief introduction on LVM:

To use the device for an LVM logical volume the device must be initialized as a physical volume (PV), which on initializing places a label near the start of the device. By default, the LVM label is placed in the second 512-byte sector. The LVM label identifies the device as an LVM physical volume which contains the UUID for the physical name. It also stores the size of block devices in bytes, and LVM metadata stored on the disk.

The LVM metadata contains the configuration details of the LVM volume groups on your system. By default, an identical copy of the metadata is maintained in every metadata area in every physical volume within the volume group.

Error which I had received when accessing an disk, where metadata was corrupted.

# pvs -o pv_name,uuid

  Couldn't find device with uuid U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy.

  

- We would be able to find the UUID for the PV in /etc/lvm/archive directory, deactivating the volume and setting the partial(-P) argument will

enable you to find the UUID of the missing corrupted physical volume.

# vgchange -an --partial

  Partial mode. Incomplete logical volumes will be processed.

  Couldn't find device with uuid U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy.

  0 logical volume(s) in volume group "testvg" now active

#

# vgck testvg

  Couldn't find device with uuid U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy.

  The volume group is missing 1 physical volumes.

#

# pvck /dev/sdd

  Could not find LVM label on /dev/sdd

#

- pvcreate comes in handy restores the physical volume label with the metadata information contained in VG group(testvg). The restore file argument instructs the   pvcreate command to make the new physical volume compatible with the old one on the volume group, ensuring that the new metadata will not be placed where the old physical volume contained data.

NOTE: The pvcreate command overwrites only the LVM metadata areas and does not affect the existing data areas.

# pvcreate --uuid "U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy" --restore /etc/lvm/backup/testvg /dev/sdd

  Couldn't find device with uuid U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy.

  Writing physical volume data to disk "/dev/sdd"

  Physical volume "/dev/sdd" successfully created

#

- vgcfgrestore command to restore the volume group's metadata

# vgcfgrestore testvg

  Restored volume group testvg

#

# pvs -o pv_name,uuid | grep "U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy"

  /dev/sdd   U3qzRV-jakK-0JFC-zVmq-F1aa-nxrg-9JYsXy

#

Recovered volume metadata from LVM.