Last update: October 28, 2008
Acronis True Image restores LVM volumes as non-LVM partitions. You will need to take extra steps to make the restored system bootable.
This article applies to:
Introduction
You need to back up logical volumes of LVM and ordinary (non-LVM) partitions. There is no need to back up physical volumes of LVM, as they are backed up sector-by-sector and there is no guarantee that it will work after the restore.
Acronis True Image recognizes logical LVM volumes as Dynamic or GPT volumes.
Logical LVM volumes can be restored as non-LVM (regular) partitions in Acronis Rescue Mode. Logical LVM volumes can be restored on top of existing LVM volumes. See LVM Volumes Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Linux Supports or LVM Volumes Supported by Acronis True Image Echo.
To make the restored system bootable you will have to act as described below.
Solution
- Restore partitions
- Restore logical LVM volumes and non-LVM partitions one by one with Acronis True Image.
- Do not forget to make the boot partition Active (/ or /boot if available).
- Make the system bootable
- Boot from Linux Distribution Rescue CD.
- Enter rescue mode.
- Mount the restored root(/) partition. If the rescue CD mounted partitions automatically, skip to the next step.
Most distributions will try to mount the system partitions as designated in /etc/fstab of the restored system. Since there are no LVMs available, this process is likely to fail. This is why you might need to mount the restored partitions manually:
Enter the following command:
#cat /proc/partitions
You will get the list of recognized partitions:
major
|
minor
|
#blocks
|
name
|
8
|
0
|
8388608
|
sda
|
8
|
1
|
104391
|
sda1
|
8
|
2
|
8281507
|
sda2
|
Mount the root(/) partition:
#mount -t [fs_type] [device] [system_mount_point]
In the example below /dev/sda2 is root, because it was restored as second primary partition on SATA disk
#mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt/sysimage
- Mount /boot if it was not mounted automatically:
#mount -t [fs_type] /dev/[device] /[system_mount_point]/boot
Example:
#mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/sysimage/boot
- chroot to the mounted / of the restored partition
#chroot [mount_point]
- Mount /proc in chroot
#mount -t proc proc /proc
- Create hard disk devices in /dev if it was not populated automatically.
Check existing partitions with cat /proc/partitions and create appropriate devices for them:
#/sbin/MAKEDEV [device]
- Edit /etc/fstab on the restored partition:
Replace all entries of /dev/VolGroupXX/LogVolXX with appropriate /dev/[device]. You can find which device you need to mount in cat /proc/partitions.
- Edit grub.conf
Open /boot/grub/grub.conf and edit it to replace /dev/VolGroupXX/LogVolXX with appropriate /dev/[device]
- Reactivate GRUB
Run the following command to re-activate GRUB automatically:
#grub-install /dev/[device]
- Make sure the system boots fine.
More information
See also:
Read more about LVM at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
Operating Systems:
Bootable Media (Full)
Linux Distribution
