Re: [Evms-devel] Re: Bug#190871: evms: running 'evmsn' on new system wipes the partition table - repeatable

[Don M. <dlm...@us...>]

>More detail:

>From a running system
>I zero the hard disk first: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc
>I partition the hard disk with fdisk, and the kernel does not complain
>about an old partition table, so I mkfs.ext3 on the boot and root

Are you running on an evms kernel at this time?  Not sure what you mean
about the kernel not complaining about the old partition table...?  When
fdisk completes it sends a BLKRRPART ioctl to the blk driver ... which
results in the partitions being refreshed in the kernel.  Did you mean to
say it didn't complain about the new partition table?  Did you check the
kernel log?

>partitions and re-place the minimal system: installed with Woody and
>dist-upgraded to sid with patched 2.4.20 kernel (XFS+ACPI+evms+usagi)

Ok ... at this point you have a 2.4.20 kernel up and running.  You listed
evms as a kernel patch so I assume your running a 1.2.x evms ... easilly
recognized by having evms kernel configuration options.

>Here I reconnect the disk to hda, boot it to single-user and run evmsn,
>then quit back to the shell and run 'fdisk -l' to check and the
>partition table is not valid.

Reconnect the disk to hda ... ?  Not sure what you mean by reconnect the
disk.  Isn't hda an installed ide drive?  After running evmsn ... did you
have to commit any changes or did you simply bring evmsn up and then
immediatly exit?

>One time, it did not seem to kill the partition table until I installed
>the lvm container onto hda4.

How did you install the lvm container ... evmsn || evmsgui || evms || evms
lvm util || lvm utility?   By the way ... do you have LVM configured in the
kernel along with EVM LVM support?


>The output from the running system when I double-check is:
...
>Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target0/lun0/disc: 6448 MB, 6448619520 bytes
>15 heads, 63 sectors/track, 13328 cylinders
>Units = cylinders of 945 * 512 = 483840 bytes

>Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target0/lun0/disc doesn't contain a valid
>partition table


Just to be clear about this ... your installing LVM on hda and ...
reporting problems with the partition table on hda ... right?   Since we
are only worried about primary partitions ... could you dd if=/dev/hda
of=mbr.bin count=1 and send it to me ... dlm...@us....


>> Can you send a copy of /var/log/evms-engine.log from when this happened
>> (reportbug would have offered to do this automatically, but apparently
you
>> declined)?

>I'll re-try again and try to save the log, since it was reported from
>running system and not the system with the trouble. I'll make sure to
>turn on all logging.


Yea, the engine log will walk us through the partition table discovery.
"evmsn -d everything"

-Don