[mdlug] More new hard drive details

[Jonathan Billings]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 07:38:30AM -0500, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> IF you ever use LVM, then the very definition of all files which
> are under LVM are fully dependant upon one or more files in /etc
> being completely intact.  Any damage to the / filesystem (i.e.
> corruption) can result in ALL of the LVM partitions being unrecoverable
> (unless you can afford to spend $hundreds to $thousands to reverse
> engineer the LVM table through inspection of the managed diskspace.)

Actually, LVM (or LVM2, rather, since that's what modern distros use)
information is stored on the block devices, rather than a file in
/etc.  And the filesystem information remains in the filesystem
superblocks.  Typically, when a system boots with lvm, the initrd has
the lvm tools which scan for volume groups, and then make them
active. 

If the / filesystem is lost, regardless of whether it's in LVM or not,
you can still find and mount other LVM volumes.  The only non-lvm
partition I ever use anymore is /boot because of GRUB.

I suspect you're experience has only been with LVM1.  I suggest taking
a look at LVM2, it's actually rather useful.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>