Probably LVM will refuse to create a whole-device PV if there is a partition 
table. 

Cheers, Andreas

On 2010-10-20, at 18:31, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Andres,
> 
> If I am going to recreate LVM on the whole device (as it was originaly 
> created) do I still need to overwrite MBR with zeros prior that? I guess 
> creation of the LVM will overwrite it but I am asking just to make sure.
> 
> Wojciech
> 
> On 20 October 2010 18:40, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2010-10-20, at 11:36, Wojciech Turek wrote:
> > Your help is mostly appreciated Andreas. May I ask one more question?
> > I would like to perform the recovery procedure on the image of the disk (I 
> > am making it using dd) rather then the physical device. In order to do that 
> > is it enough to bind the image to the loop device and use that loop device 
> > as it is was a physical device?
> 
> I'm not sure that is 100% safe.  Having an image may result in LVM to create 
> the LVs with different parameters for some reason.  Instead, I'd keep the 
> image as backup and do the recovery on the original device.  Also, the 
> original device is much more likely to run e2fsck faster, which will help you 
> get any remaining data back more quickly.
> 
> > On 20 October 2010 17:41, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 2010-10-20, at 10:15, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On 20 October 2010 16:32, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Right - you need to recreate the LV exactly as it was before. If you 
> >> created it all at once on the whole LUN then it is likely to be allocated 
> >> in a linear way. If there are multiple LVs on the same LUN and they were 
> >> expanded after use the chance of recovering them is very low.
> >> There was one LVM on that LUN I created it using  following commands:
> >>
> >> pvcreate /dev/sdc
> >> vgcreate ost16vg /dev/sdc
> >> lvcreate --name ost16v -l 100%VG ost16vg
> >>
> >> So in order to recreate that LVM on the formatted LUN i need to repeat 
> >> above steps, is that right?
> >
> > If you know the exact LVM command then you probably don't need findsuper at 
> > all, since you should get back your original LV. The findsuper tool is 
> > useful if you don't know the original partition layout.
> >
> >> That said, if there were filesystems formatted in each partition, the 
> >> amount of data loss may be large. You may have some saving grace if the 
> >> first partitions are very small and fit inside the space previously used 
> >> by the 400MB journal.
> >> Unfortunately new partitions use much more space than 400mb
> >>    8    32 7809904640 sdc
> >>    8    33   10484719 sdc1
> >>    8    34    4193280 sdc2
> >>    8    35    4193280 sdc3
> >>    8    36    8387584 sdc4
> >>    8    37 7782640640 sdc5
> >
> > The only good news is that the new filesystems will be offset from the 
> > original filesystem due to the LVM metadata, and you are more likely to 
> > have newer data away from the start of the filesystem, so there is some 
> > hope of getting some data back.
> >
> >
> >> On 2010-10-20, at 9:06, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Thank you for quick reply.
> >>> Unfortunately all partitions were formatted with ext3, also I didn't 
> >>> mention earlier but the OST was placed on the LVM volume which is now 
> >>> gone as the installation script formatted the physical device. I 
> >>> understand  that this complicates things even further. In that case i 
> >>> guess firstly I need to try to recover the LVM information otherwise fsck 
> >>> will not be able to find anything is that right?
> >>>
> >>> Best regards,
> >>>
> >>> Wojciech
> >>>
> >>> On 20 October 2010 08:46, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> 
> >>> wrote:
> >>> On 2010-10-19, at 17:01, Wojciech Turek wrote:
> >>> > Due to the locac disk failure in an OSS one of our /scratch OSTs was 
> >>> > formatted by automatic installation script. This script created 5 small 
> >>> > partitions and 6th partition consisting of the remaining space on that 
> >>> > OST. Nothing else was written to that device since then. Is there a way 
> >>> > to recover any data from that OST?
> >>>
> >>> Your best bet is to make a full "dd" backup of the OST to a new device 
> >>> (for safety), first restore the original partition table.  If there was 
> >>> not originally a partition table, then you can just erase the new 
> >>> partitions:
> >>>
> >>>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/XXX bs=512 count=1
> >>>
> >>> Then run e2fsck -fy, followed by "ll_recover_lost_found_objs" (from a 
> >>> newer lustre RPM, if you don't have it).  It is likely that you will get 
> >>> some or most of the data back.  This depends heavily on exactly what was 
> >>> written over the original filesystem.
> >>>
> >>> If it was just a new partition table, there should be relatively little 
> >>> damage (ext3 is very robust this way, and can repair itself so long as 
> >>> the starting alignment is correct).  If there were filesystems formatted 
> >>> in each of these partitions, then the amount of data available will be 
> >>> reduced significantly.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers, Andreas
> >>> --
> >>> Andreas Dilger
> >>> Lustre Technical Lead
> >>> Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Wojciech Turek
> >>
> >> Senior System Architect
> >>
> >> High Performance Computing Service
> >> University of Cambridge
> >> Email: [email protected]
> >> Tel: (+)44 1223 763517
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Wojciech Turek
> >
> > Senior System Architect
> >
> > High Performance Computing Service
> > University of Cambridge
> > Email: [email protected]
> > Tel: (+)44 1223 763517
> 
> 
> Cheers, Andreas
> --
> Andreas Dilger
> Lustre Technical Lead
> Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Wojciech Turek
> 
> Senior System Architect
> 
> High Performance Computing Service
> University of Cambridge
> Email: [email protected]
> Tel: (+)44 1223 763517 
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