[SOLVED] can't mount lvm external drive on other system

Nareto · 2013-04-20 15:53:40

I formatted and created lvm volumes (physical and logical) on a new extern (USB) hard drive from my raspberry pi, which is running archlinuxarm. When I attach the hard drive to my main archlinux machine, running vgscan and then "vgchange -a y" makes the volumes visible, however I can't mount them:

mount: /dev/mapper/vgBigBook-lvmedia: can't read superblock

# fdisk -l
...
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mapper/vgBigBook-lvmedia: Input/output error

lsusb does show correctly the drive:

Bus 002 Device 013: ID 1058:1140 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. My Book Essential USB3.0
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               3.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0         9
  idVendor           0x1058 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
  idProduct          0x1140 My Book Essential USB3.0
  bcdDevice           10.16
  iManufacturer           1 Western Digital
  iProduct                2 My Book 1140
  iSerial                 5 5743415A414A343436343137
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           44
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          4 USB Mass Storage
    bmAttributes         0xc0
      Self Powered
    MaxPower                2mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage
      bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI
      bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk-Only
      iInterface              6 MSC Bulk-Only Transport
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes
        bInterval               0
        bMaxBurst              15
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes
        bInterval               0
        bMaxBurst              15
Binary Object Store Descriptor:
  bLength                 5
  bDescriptorType        15
  wTotalLength           22
  bNumDeviceCaps          2
  USB 2.0 Extension Device Capability:
    bLength                 7
    bDescriptorType        16
    bDevCapabilityType      2
    bmAttributes   0x00000002
      Link Power Management (LPM) Supported
  SuperSpeed USB Device Capability:
    bLength                10
    bDescriptorType        16
    bDevCapabilityType      3
    bmAttributes         0x00
    wSpeedsSupported   0x000e
      Device can operate at Full Speed (12Mbps)
      Device can operate at High Speed (480Mbps)
      Device can operate at SuperSpeed (5Gbps)
    bFunctionalitySupport   1
      Lowest fully-functional device speed is Full Speed (12Mbps)
    bU1DevExitLat          10 micro seconds
    bU2DevExitLat          32 micro seconds
Device Status:     0x0001
  Self Powered

any ideas?

Last edited by Nareto (2013-04-24 15:04:54)

Nareto · 2013-04-21 14:29:03

this is getting very frustrating... journalctl gives this when I plug in the drive and try to access it (for example by running "fdisk -l").

On my laptop instead (which is also an up-to-date archlinux 64bit) I still get the "No caching mode page present" error but not the "buffer I/0 error", and *most* of the times I've been able to correctly mount it - not allways though, sometime it behaves exactly as on my desktop.

I tried uninstalling udiskie and udisks which weren't working no more anyway, to take away a layer of complexity, but still after a reboot I'm in the same situtation.

Maybe I should mention the hard drive is USB3 and is self-powered through its own power supply plugged in the electrical outlet. I tried various USB3 and USB2 ports on my desktop without change, while my laptop only has USB2 (and the inconsistent behaviour on the laptop was with the drive allways plugged in the same port)

Nareto · 2013-04-21 14:51:01

I though maybe it has something to do with the fact that the raspberry pi has little RAM and I used it to partition and mkfs.ext4 large partitions - I did get some errors about memory, which I can't remember now. Anyhow I'm reformatting the drive from the desktop and will see if it works

Nareto · 2013-04-24 15:04:38

I had some weird behaviour - even after reformatting at first I got same types of errors... in the end though (after quite some trials) it's working - I think the turning point was deleting the old volume groups, reformatting, creating new ones with different names, rebooting and then creating the logical volumes, formatting them, and running fsck to check they're ok... Again I'm not sure what, but something in that list of actions made it work.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-04-20 15:53:40

[SOLVED] can't mount lvm external drive on other system

#2 2013-04-21 14:29:03

Re: [SOLVED] can't mount lvm external drive on other system

#3 2013-04-21 14:51:01

Re: [SOLVED] can't mount lvm external drive on other system

#4 2013-04-24 15:04:38

Re: [SOLVED] can't mount lvm external drive on other system

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