LVM Problem - vgimport - wrong number of physical volumes to import volume group
 

Hi all.

Ive got a bit of a problem with re-importing my volume group on this system.

I was removing a few hard drives and moved it to a new system. I vgreduced and everything to remove drives, it seemed working okay, so I exported in preparation to move to another box.
Now, I am unable to import it again. I have plugged the drives I removed back in, just in case, however they seem to be not related.


Im pretty new to lvm, so maybe ive missed something obvious?
Ive been googling and reading howto for a couple of hours, ive still no solution (maybe im a noob?). Ive seen some other vgimport related stuff, but not as seemingly simple as this?!?


Does anybody know why vgimport is saying I have the wrong number of drives?
Im 99% sure its wanting 4 drives, but it still isn’t liking me very much.

Alternatively, does anybody know how to get data off this exported vg, so I can at least not loose everything?


I noticed people were posting lots of info, so I thought I might do the same, just to give a good idea on whats going on

Pvscan results:
pvscan -- reading all physical volumes (this may take a while...)
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdg" is in EXPORTED VG "storage_group" [93.12 GB / 0 free]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdh" is in EXPORTED VG "storage_group" [111.75 GB / 3.16 GB free]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hde" is in no VG [37.27 GB]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdf" is in no VG [38.35 GB]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdc" is in EXPORTED VG "storage_group" [111.75 GB / 0 free]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hda3" is in EXPORTED VG "storage_group" [70.88 GB / 0 free]
pvscan -- inactive PV "/dev/hdb" is in no VG [38.35 GB]
pvscan -- total: 7 [501.64 GB] / in use: 4 [387.67 GB] / in no VG: 3 [113.96 GB]

hde, hdf and hdb were going to be removed. As you can see there they seem pretty much unrelated to the problem, but I have plugged them back in just in case


Pvdata /dev/hda3 shows:
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/hda3
VG Name storage_groupPV_EXP
PV Size 70.93 GB [148751858 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 136 KB]
PV# 3
PV Status available
Allocatable yes (but full)
Cur LV 1
PE Size (KByte) 32768
Total PE 2268
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 2268
PV UUID 5lk3Ei-MLat-sXFg-xCv3-HGll-W5lC-fkXYZq

--- Volume group ---
VG Name
VG Access read/write
VG Status NOT available/exported/resizable
VG # 1
MAX LV 256
Cur LV 1
Open LV 0
MAX LV Size 2 TB
Max PV 256
Cur PV 4
Act PV 4
VG Size 387.50 GB
PE Size 32 MB
Total PE 12400
Alloc PE / Size 12299 / 384.34 GB
Free PE / Size 101 / 3.16 GB
VG UUID 1wczAS-BPIW-NdcH-VCRL-DoB5-1fnJ-8yTw97

Plus a heap of other stuff.
The “Cur PV” amount to me says my vgremoves were successful, and all I should be importing is the 4 drives that are still active.



“vgimport storage_group /dev/hdg /dev/hdc /dev/hda3 /dev/hdh” shows:
vgimport -- ERROR: wrong number of physical volumes to import volume group "storage_group"

but:

“vgimport storage_group /dev/hdg /dev/hdc /dev/hda3” shows:
vgimport -- ERROR: only 3 physical volumes of 4 given for volume group "storage_group"

and this is a bit weird (notice the ordering of drives)
“vgimport storage_group /dev/hdg /dev/hdc /dev/hdh”
vgimport -- ERROR: wrong number of physical volumes to import volume group "storage_group"

I didn’t think the ordering of the import command was important?



any ideas anyone on how to get my group imported>

Andrew..