Hi,
I am in some kind of special hell - go easy.
This is a sad tale of 2 servers totally loosing every damn file in an instant.
It may be I have a bug, It may be me - perhaps I am missing something.
I need to tell a bit of a story...
On 22Dec05 my sme7 box (my main server - no lectures please) melted - total loss of the file system. I had a couple of lock ups and then everything was gone. in the end all the hardware was fine - guess what I am typing this on.... except for the powersupply - bulging capacitors.
I built a new machine - 2 * enterprise class SATA 300GB mirrored with an intel mobo, intel 1G nic, p4 2.8Ghz - nice little box. All new Server - all of it.
It ran fantastic till the house fire tuesday night.
Yes house fire.
The fire was in the power box outside and the main distribution board was totalled. Nothing happened in my office or anywhere else in the house.
I kept the fire at bay till the fire brigade arrived (make sure you have a fire extinguisher - its worth it to be able to say "I saved my house" - trust me even your wife loves you!)
Whilst the pros were putting out the fire - I pushed the power button on my server. It's on a ups and was still running long after the street power was removed from the house.
It never booted again. @#$%@% Now over the years I have dumped power on all sorts of linux distros - they can take it. (I know you can be unlucky but generally your ok)
Rescue time!
Insert the sme7 cd - run up till the installation wants to delete partitions - switch to another console -
lvm pvscan - no volumes
fdisk reports partitions
e2fsck says no magic number -but I am not surprised I cant get the lvm to work.
Oh hell
BUT- I have another little server that backs up my main server every day! Ha ha ha - I aint stupid (although there is rising doubt).
Install SME7 on one disk (after all raid didnt do me much good and I can raid later plus I'd like to try to resuce the old build)
Wait for 250Gb of data to transfer - hours and hours
Move the ibays and users into place
copy across the passwd and shadow etc, templates-custom
signal-event post upgrade
signal-event reboot
Never boots
lvm pvscan - no volumes
its all gone.
Um I am at loss and server less - At the moment it looks like back to SME6 after lunch - ah no - wont work with my sata - give me a break.
The exact error message I get (picking through things)
unable to find volume group vg_primary
/bin/lvm exited abnormally.
naturally things go straight to hell from there.
Can any one suggest
A rescue strategy for the disk?
How to install sme 7 WITHOUT lvm? (btw I love the concept of lvm and can use it - but right now -I cant rescue it)
HELP!