undo LVM?

[Luis Paulo]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Herman Aalderink <hermanaa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-05-02 at 11:16 +0800, Herman Aalderink wrote:
>> I have no access to my drives. I have to format all ?
>> During install of 10.04 Alternate 64 I used LVM. The install was not completed.
>>  Now all 3 drives (in 2 'logical volume groups') are gone.
>
> Because the Ubunty 10.4LTS did not finish, I doubt I can get the LVM
> system working. (I'll try, after trying RESCUE).
> The problem might be limited to Grub.
> Grub (I think Grub2) comes up with an error.
>
> To have email (to reach this list) I installed a new 10.04. I
> reformatted 1 of the 3 harddisks (the HD is a separate logical
> volumegroup under LVM)
> Again Grub did not finish (because of the LVM drives, afaict). I use
> 'boot from 1st HD' to get 10.04 going.
>
> I used LVM to learn something new. Had no idea of it's implications.
> (a simple 'Do not use LVM if you are not familiar with LVM' would have
> prevented my problem.)
> I had no idea of the implications.
>
>> I need the contents of my (old) HOME (that I marked 'do not format').
>> I did identify the partition, but no access.
>
> Windows XP is in there as well.
> (this could well be final GoodBye to Windows ...)
> Essentials had been backed up.
> But I lost a lot of interesting notes, incl. all my recent Linux notes
> gathered from this list.
>
>> Gparted reported:
>>  Flags: lvm
>>
>> Unable to detect filesystem! Possible reasons are:
>>  -the filesystem is damaged.
>>  -the filesystem is unknown to Gparted
>>  -there is no filesystem (unformatted)
>
> I tried Puppy Linux. I have no access.
> (cannot read the LVM stuff I guess)
>
> I will try some RESCUE CDs that I have.
>
> It's frustrating. All the stuff is there in good order.
> But I cannot get to it.
>
> Herman in Philippines.
>
>
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I use this doc for LVM
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/commontask.html

If you use RAID and LVM (do you?), this one is also a help (chapter 11
RAID and LVM)
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html
that now point to the wiki
https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Linux_Raid

None of those have something specific about LVM recover, except
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/recovermetadata.html

but a web search will find a lot of that, like
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/02/how-to-recover-lvm-partition-on-damaged.html
that recommends to try
$ lvchange -ay
If you don't have badblocks (I think you don't) that page may help,
and there are much others:
http://codeworks.gnomedia.com/archives/2005/general/lvm_recovery/
I googled for "LVM recover"

Sorry I myself can't be a better help. Please do report back your efforts.
Regards
Luis