On 02/04/13 14:20, Steven Haigh wrote:
> On 03/04/13 00:10, John Pilkington wrote:
>> Hi:  I'm new to this list.
>>
>> I installed SL6 i386 on a Compaq laptop, circa 2007, in November 2011
>> and kept it updated.  I used it mainly to try newer builds of MythTV
>> before updating my main Mythbox.  It worked well, although closedown was
>> rarely clean.
>>
>> Last week booting failed to complete; the lv_home superblock could not
>> be read.  fdisk -l doesn't see it.
>>
>> /etc/lvm/archive and /etc/lvm/backup are unchanged from initial
>> installation; one was created before, and one after, running /sbin/vgs
>> <options>.  That file no no longer exists, and because the lvm2 package
>> has been removed, tools such as vgcfgrestore are also absent.  My
>> attempt to reinstall lvm2 failed at the download stage, although I do
>> have a local copy of the previously installed package.  The seems to be
>> some interaction with initscripts.
>
> Firstly, you're going to want to install the lvm packages again. No
> matter what you do, without the tools, you won't be able to interact
> with anything LVM without those tools.
>
>> I did a quick search of the list archives but saw nothing that looked
>> relevant.  There's a recently active Bugzilla thread here, but I suspect
>> it's dealing with more complex installations than mine.
>>
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=800801
>>
>> Perhaps a potential cause, other than unclean-shutdown. might be using
>> python binary-write mode to cut-and-copy multi-GB video files on a
>> 32-bit machine; but that's really just speculation.
>>
>> I would welcome suggestions.
>
> Its more likely that because the tools were removed, the reboot would
> mean the VG/LVs were unmounted - then without the tools you wouldn't be
> able to mount them again.
>
> You should have lvm2 and lvm2-libs installed at a bare minimum. Then I'd
> try vgscan, lvscan etc and see what appears.

Thank you!  Fortunately I had compatible packages for lvm2, lvm2-libs 
and initscripts cached and was able to install them.  No idea how they 
had become uninstalled.  Then vgscan, lvscan and reboot back to normal.
Since then I've upgraded to SL6.4 although it seems that at present, 
although dmesg shows my tv tuner is recognised, I have to run an older 
kernel that has a matching v4l module to get tv capability.

John P