[linux-lvm] lvcreate gives 'device-mapper: reload ioctl failed: Invalid argument'

[Matt McHenry]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Jonathan E Brassow wrote:

> You can certainly try an 'lvremove maingroup/dvd'.  It seems to me that
> the logical volume is in the metadata (you can look for it in
> /etc/lvm/backup/maingroup), but for some reason it is not able to
> complete the load of that device into device-mapper.  Because it only
> partially succeeds, it is giving you a device with no table...  After
> doing the 'lvremove' you may need to also do a 'dmsetup remove
> maingroup-dvd'.  Once completely removed, you could try your 'lvcreate'
> again.

	I took a look in /etc/lvm/backup/maingroup.  Again keeping in mind
that I don't know much about LVM, it looks to me like the 'gen-website'
and 'dvd' LVs are overlapping somehow.  Assuming that's correct, I'm still
reluctant to try any 'remove' commands because I don't want to destroy the
data on the gen-website LV.  So once again I'll await further replies.  :)

                gen-website {
                        id = "GhsR38-lmVZ-5gyN-fbt3-RWJv-f9rF-25aqpy"
                        status = ["READ", "WRITE", "VISIBLE"]
                        segment_count = 1

                        segment1 {
                                start_extent = 0
                                extent_count = 3840     # 15 Gigabytes

                                type = "striped"
                                stripe_count = 1        # linear

                                stripes = [
                                        "pv5", 0
                                ]
                        }
                }

                dvd {
                        id = "E2VpR0-rfCr-PA4r-Mrtz-50au-2s5T-kGTP5E"
                        status = ["READ", "WRITE", "VISIBLE"]
                        segment_count = 1

                        segment1 {
                                start_extent = 0
                                extent_count = 3840     # 15 Gigabytes

                                type = "striped"
                                stripe_count = 1        # linear

                                stripes = [
                                        "pv5", 3840
                                ]
                        }
                }

> I talked to someone about this and they said that it could be a kernel
> device-mapper/user-space device-mapper mismatch issue.  I'm not sure I
> understand that logic, given that you are able to load other devices of
> the same target type (i.e. linear).  Perhaps that person would like to
> speak up here?

	Here's a repeat of the version info I posted earlier.  I'm not
sure if this is reporting kernel or user-space info (or both), and I don't
see any more version info under /proc/ ...

# lvm version
  LVM version:     2.02.06 (2006-05-12)
  Library version: 1.02.07 (2006-05-11)
  Driver version:  4.4.0


> P.S.  Are you always getting the 'cdrom' error?  You may wish to change
> the filter option to exclude the cdrom device.  To do that, change the
> "filter" line in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf to:
> filter = [ "r|/dev/cdrom|" ]

	Yes, thanks for that (I recently added a new dvd burner and hadn't
had a chance to make that change yet).  Speaking of, any chance that such
a hardware change might have anything to do with this problem?  (It may
have changed device names for some of the pvs; I don't remember for sure.)

----------------------
Matt McHenry
http://www.speakeasy.org/~jerith/
jerith at speakeasy.org
be052 at scn.org