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Hello all,
I have a odd situation I've never seen before. Recently I added an old HDD ( WD 750GB Green) to my new workstation on SATA1. That HDD used to be in my ancient Atom based HTPC but I need the space for a project (and I'm too cheap to buy a new HDD ^_^) so I moved it to my new Skylake workstation. Everything seems to work fine EXCEPT there seems to be one logical volume that is not mounting and any attempt to use LVM to manage the situation hangs (example: pvs, vgs, etc.). Below is some diagnostic information. I expected to see /sdb/sdb5/VG_WD_750-LV_Root but it's nowhere to be found. Also curious is the partition table for that device that show what looks like overlapping partitions (one LVM and one that's simply labeled EXTENDED). This disk comes from a very, very old system that has been upgraded and re-purposed many times over the years with varying degrees of skill involved along the way. The dmesg output shows that sdb3 has no valid superblock. I'm guessing sometime in the past there was a partition that was purely EXT3 and then it got overwritten with LVM but the partition table was never corrected.
I'm not a complete Linux NOOB nor am I totally hardcore but this one's got me stumped. I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Any suggestions of how to diagnose the situation further and/or remedy the situation outright? My goal is to copy off anything useful from the WD HDD to the cloud and then wipe the disk and make it one big data partition...
Thanks in advance!
---> Relevant lsblk output <---
sda 8:0 0 232.9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 512M 0 part /boot
└─sda2 8:2 0 232.4G 0 part
├─VG_Samsung--850_250-LV_Swap 254:0 0 8G 0 lvm
├─VG_Samsung--850_250-LV_Temp 254:1 0 8G 0 lvm /tmp
└─VG_Samsung--850_250-LV_Root 254:2 0 200G 0 lvm /
sdb 8:16 0 698.7G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 248G 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 102M 0 part
├─sdb3 8:19 0 1K 0 part
└─sdb5 8:21 0 450.5G 0 part
├─VG_WD_750-LV_Swap 254:3 0 3.8G 0 lvm
├─VG_WD_750-LV_Temp 254:4 0 7.6G 0 lvm
├─VG_WD_750-LV_Var 254:5 0 7.6G 0 lvm
└─VG_WD_750-LV_Home 254:6 0 59.6G 0 lvm
---> Relevant fdisk -l output <---
Disk /dev/sdb: 698.7 GiB, 750156374016 bytes, 1465149168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x132e0cfd
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 520095743 520093696 248G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 520104375 520313219 208845 102M 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 520313220 1465144064 944830845 450.5G 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 520313283 1465144064 944830782 450.5G 8e Linux LVM
Disk /dev/sda: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: ACDB40DE-1920-494F-80FC-68D80AE32B60
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sda2 1050624 488396799 487346176 232.4G Linux LVM
---> Relevant dmesg output <---
[ 8752.226937] EXT4-fs (sdb3): unable to read superblock
[ 8752.227075] EXT4-fs (sdb3): unable to read superblock
[ 8752.227193] EXT4-fs (sdb3): unable to read superblock
[ 8752.254789] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: read failed, block=256, location=256
[ 8752.255196] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: tag version 0x0000 != 0x0002 || 0x0003, block 0
[ 8752.255222] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: read failed, block=512, location=512
[ 8752.255228] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: tag version 0x0000 != 0x0002 || 0x0003, block 0
[ 8752.255232] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: tag version 0x0000 != 0x0002 || 0x0003, block 0
[ 8752.255321] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: read failed, block=256, location=256
[ 8752.255327] UDF-fs: error (device sdb3): udf_read_tagged: read failed, block=512, location=512
[ 8752.255331] UDF-fs: warning (device sdb3): udf_fill_super: No partition found (1)
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At a glance, an off-the-cuff shot as it were, it does appear that sdb3 has been corrupted in some form or fashion be it some odd formatting or damage to the formatting. What do you see when you use a partition manager such as gparted? (You might find a clue there.)
...it got overwritten with LVM but the partition table was never corrected...
This implies that you have an unformatted volume.
BTW, the title is a bit confusing in light of the detailed description- might adjust the title to fit. Just a thought.
Last edited by madpierre (2016-07-10 02:50:57)
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Thank you for your reply,
I tried gparted but it just hangs with the message "Searching /dev/sdb partitions" which is odd. I've never had that happen before. :-(
I'm going to do so some more research to see if the boot record is fubar somehow. It's been a while since I've had to delve this deeply into storage setup (AWS and GCP have made me lazy... ^_^) so I'm treading lightly.
Finally, thanks for the pointer on the title, any suggestions from a reader standpoint?
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TechDad3 writes:
Finally, thanks for the pointer on the title, any suggestions from a reader standpoint?
"Can't access Extended partition on HDD" (?)
Kinda reads like a "Disk Management 101" problem. I suspect you have the ability to sort this one out. It's just a matter of observing, researching, and thinking.
Remember, MBR only supports four primary partitions. That might be a clue for you.
Not likely, but if all else fails a full surface scan might be worthwhile.
Last edited by madpierre (2016-07-10 18:10:41)
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So I just came home and ran yaourt noticing there was an update to LVM2 which I applied. Rebooted, which I had tried several times before the update just to be sure, and voila everything works now... ^_^
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TechDad3 writes:
So I just came home and ran yaourt noticing there was an update to LVM2 which I applied. Rebooted, which I had tried several times before the update just to be sure, and voila everything works now... ^_^
Excellent. Well done. Don't forget to mark the thread as "[SOLVED]".
Last edited by madpierre (2016-07-13 10:36:56)
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