Cloning LVM metadata separately from the command line

[Giorgio Busatto]

Hi,

first of all, thanks a lot for this very useful software.

I have a question regarding LVM volumes.

As far as I know, clonezilla uses partclone to clone known filesystems such as ext4 or xfs by copying only the used sectors.
I have used partclone separately from the command line to clone and restore my filesystems.

Furthermore, as far as I understand, clonezilla also supports cloning disks containing LVM volumes.

My question: is there a separate tool in the clonezilla package so that I can only clone the LVM metadata of an LVM physical volume
and then restore them later?
What I would like to do, is to copy all the sectors from an LVM physical volume that do not contain any data.
I would then take an image of the data using partclone separately.

I would then first restore the LVM physical volume by

*
writing back the metadata sectors to the target partition,
*
activating the logical volumes contained in the restored physical volume, and
*
restoring the filesystems to the logical volumes using partclone.

Is there such a tool to create a binary backup of LVM metadata and restore it? Can I use such a tool in isolation without starting the whole clonezilla, like I do with partclone for filesystems?

Thanks a lot,

Giorgio

[Steven Shiau]

"only clone the LVM metadata of an LVM physical volume" -> If you meant the LVM volume group configuration, you can use vgcfgbackup and vgcfgrestore:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/vgcfgbackup.8.html
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/vgcfgrestore.8.html
That's what we use in Clonezilla.