Fstab, volume groups and mkfs.ext3 story

Balinus · 09-19-2008, 12:25 PM

Hi! Since I needed to reformat my /home partition, I executed

Code:

mkfs.ext3 -I 128 /dev/sda5

After execution, I rebooted without rewriting the fstab file and I wasn't able to boot anymore. I changed the value through the rescue mode of Fedora9 DVD by changing fstab file with the appropriate line (I hope!) by changing the UUID from the old /home partition to /dev/sda5 :

Code:

UUID=96cd9a9c-cc4f-4d3e-962a-e546cad82ec2 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
/dev/sda5 /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2

However, since this event, I have a "no volume groups found" error during the boot. I checked with fdisk -l and got :

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disque /dev/sda: 200.0 Go, 200049647616 octets
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylindres of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd72dedf9

Périphérique Amorce    Début         Fin      Blocs    Id  Système
/dev/sda1   *           1        8485    68155730+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            8486        9701     9767520   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            9702       24321   117435150    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9702       23835   113531323+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           23836       24321     3903763+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda3 is not supposed to be there (I think). Originally, there was only :

/dev/sda1 : Vista (65GB)
/dev/sda2 : Fedora on / (10GB)
/dev/sda5 : /home (~115GB)
/dev/sda6 : swap (4GB)

So I wonder what should I do, didn't found a solution yet on the internet and my skills with Linux are just at the beginning. I just don't want to lose all my data all of a sudden.

Is it possible that /dev/sda5 is no longer the real name of the /home partition and that it is now /dev/sda3 ?

--------------------------
EDIT
--------------------------

Just used Gparted to see (see the link below) the partitions structure. It does make sense. In this case, what should I put in "fstab" ? See after the image, I posted my actual fstab. /dev/sda3 is not listed in fstab.

Code:

UUID=96cd9a9c-cc4f-4d3e-962a-e546cad82ec2 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
/dev/sda5 /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
UUID=6c471581-00e2-4702-9ab9-4aea6839d618 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

If I have to declare a logical group, where should I write that? And what do I need to write ?

Unless there's a way to correct the error, I plan to re-install everything.

Thank!

Thanks for any help

Unknown_User · 09-19-2008, 05:34 PM

I'm afraid I'm not an expert here (there will hopefully be one along in a minute!) but your fdisk -l post shows both sda3 and sda5 starting at sector 9702.

sda5 starts at the sector after sda2 and finishes before sda6 so isn't sda3 in error?

Balinus · 09-20-2008, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unknown_User

I'm afraid I'm not an expert here (there will hopefully be one along in a minute!) but your fdisk -l post shows both sda3 and sda5 starting at sector 9702.

sda5 starts at the sector after sda2 and finishes before sda6 so isn't sda3 in error?

That's what I think (sda3 being in error) because it wasn't there before I applied "mkfs.ext3" to sda5.

I guess I should re-install everything.

How could I do that (i.e mkfs.ext3 -I 128) to the home partition with the installer?

Unknown_User · 09-21-2008, 04:56 AM

Have you tried editing fstab to remove the line for sda3?

If you are happy to reinstall and lose the data that you currently have on the drives I simply couldn't help myself but to experiment!

Balinus · 09-21-2008, 10:09 AM

I don'T have any important data yet (new laptop). So I'm open to experiment

As for fstab file, there's entry only for sda2 and sda5. No entry to sda3 (look at the end of 1st post).

Maybe I only need to declare sda3 as extended in fstab ?

tofino_surfer · 09-22-2008, 04:25 PM

The error message "no volume groups found" is an LVM error message. It refers to not being able to find LVM Physical Volume Groups. Did you use LVM at all ? There is no evidence of LVM in your posts but the error message is an LVM error message. Do a Google search on "no volume groups found" and the results are all LVM related.

The default for Fedora is LVM. To check whether this may be true you need to look inside the nash script in your initrd filesysem for LVM commands. The initrd file is a gzipped cpio archive. To look inside do the following.

mkdir initrd-edit
cd initrd-edit && gzip -dc /boot/initrd-2.6...img | cpio -i -c

There will be a whole filesystem in the initrd-edit directory. The file init is a nash executable script which boots up your system. Look inside this for any lvm commands such as

lvm vgchange -ay --ignorelockingfailure VolGroup00

Balinus · 09-23-2008, 01:28 PM

Thanks surfer for these precisions.

Indeed, I didn't use LVM at all. Only manual partitioning in the old way.

I don't have access to my laptop now but I'll check what you say and give back the info.

michaelk · 09-23-2008, 01:56 PM

/dev/sda is an extended partition, in a nutshell a container for logical partitions. An extended partition allows one to create more just the 4 primary. A logical has an ID >=5.
If you delete sda3 you will delete sda5 and sda6. An extended partition is not mounted.

Balinus · 09-23-2008, 03:34 PM

After some reading, it seems that it's either the new kernel (2.6.26) or xorg 1.5 that prompt with a "no logical volume found". It's only a message and not a warning apparently.

?