Remove LVM metadata without killing the patient

[Brian McKee]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Brian McKee <brian.mckee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 10:58 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Brian McKee wrote:
>>
>>> I have a working Hardy Heron box that *was* running LVM but when I
>>> restored from backup I changed to regular partitions and UUID.
>
>>> After a bit of poking around I realized the LVM info still shows up if
>>> you do a pvdisplay or vgdisplay etc.
>>> even though the LVM partitions aren't actually there anymore.  I
>>> surmise that LVM metadata must be tucked away somewhere on the disk
>>> that it would survive formatting?
>
>> /etc/lvm/*
>
> Nope :-(
>
> I removed all the files /etc/lvm/archive backup etc and the ones
> referring to the last LVM setup get recreated on boot.   I'm pretty
> sure the LVM info must be on the drive itself somewhere, like software
> RAID info.  Then a vgscan etc can pick it up and configure it
> automagically on boot etc.
>
> I could just remove LVM, but that's kinda like closing my eyes and
> plugging my ears and saying " I Don't See Any LVM - Do You? " :-)
>
> I guess the next step is the LVM users list unless anybody else has ideas?

Just a follow up note - I cloned the drive using Clonezilla and the
LVM info didn't end up on the new drive.

Of course Clonezilla didn't reinstall Grub properly, and doesn't seem
to handle drive size changes very well either.

Back to seeing if I can get mondoarchive to work properly.  That's
where I started this smozzle, since mondoarchive wasn't handling my
loooong LVM naming convention.

Brian