I did all the fsck, resize2fs, lvresize, pvresive, parted, etc. stuff and was very careful about what I was doing, but clearly wasn't careful enough. I did backup lv_root to another drive with fsarchiver before I buggered things up, but I can't restore it because, well... I don't know! At this point I'd really just like to wipe the drive I messed up except for /boot and start over but I don't know how to do that when the system seems to think the drive is mounted when it ISN'T.

Here's some info:

- device is /dev/sdb with sdb1 as /boot and sdb2 a lvm2 volume group containing lv_root and lv_swap -- it was a default Fedora 11 installation that used up the whole drive

- i did nothing to /boot and it seems to be fine, grub loads, choosing Fedora 11 shows the logo but quickly becomes a black screen, choosing Fedora 15 Live USB that I originally added from Fedora 11 works just fine (currently trying to fix things from Fedora 15)

- i deleted and recreated lv_swap and it still shows up in /dev/vg_box

- i shrunk lv_root and the filesystem is within the right size of the lv, which is within the right size of the pv, which is within the right size of the partition, which i made sure i used the right sectors, but lv_root does not show up in /dev/vg_box

- lvscan says both lv_swap and lv_root are active but lvdisplay says lv_root is "NOT available"

- system thinks /dev/sdb2 is mounted even though it ISN'T and can't seem to do ANYTHING to it because of this

lvchange -ay /dev/vg_box gives:

lvchange -an /dev/vg_box gives:

umount /dev/vg_box/lv_swap gives:

...I should have been writing stuff down as I was going. I can't think of what other errors I came across that might have helped more.

Also I'm extremely tired right now so I apologize if I'm not explaining things well enough.

I could have sworn I tried dd already but apparently not because after trying a 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb2' it did the trick. I waited a full ~5 hours for it to zero ~120GB, but I just realized I probably only really needed to specify the first little bit didn't I?

Anyway, after the dd and a reboot, the VG/PV/LV were all gone and I was able to delete the partition. I'm back to square one, but at least that nightmare is over. Now I just need to recreate everything but smaller from the get-go, and restore my backup. Things should go more smoothly now.

Okay, the original problem was solved, but now I have another slight problem.

There were no errors reported during the filesystem restore with fsarchiver and everything seems to be intact. I have no problem accessing the files from Fedora 15 Live.

Fedora 11 boots again but once it gets to the login screen there are no users displayed and the mouse and keyboard don't work. I'm wondering if it's just that /boot needs to be updated because the LVs might be slightly different? Could it be UUID-related or something? I'll start stumbling about and see if I can figure out where I should go from here, but feel free to nudge me in the right direction...

I was set on trying to see if reinstalling grub would help even though I couldn't seem to get it to work, until I downloaded/burned a Fedora 11 disc and did it from system rescue -- THEN it worked. Everything is working again, and on the reduced partition. SELinux seemed to be reset but that's not a big deal.


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