Activate second volume group at boot

[Eric Brunson]

Stuart Sears wrote:
> On 03/01/09 23:09, Eric Brunson wrote:
>> I have an external drive that I've created a second volume group on.
>>  I've done a bit of poring over the init scripts in my /etc and in
>> the initrd image, but there doesn't seem to be any facility to
>> activate anything but VolGroup00 during the boot sequence.
>
> what do you mean by 'activate' ?
>
> acknowledge the existence of?
>
> okay, just add the usb-storage module to your initrd.
> something like this should do the trick:
>
> mkintrd --with="usb-storage" -v -f /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img \
> $(uname -r)

That fixed it, thanks a bunch, Stuart. 

I'll have to do that after every kernel upgrade, though, won't I?

>
> then reboot with the disk plugged in and turned on.
>
> The script within the initrd does a 'vgscan' so as long as the pv is
> visible, the volumegroup *should* appear. It will not be automatically
> mounted.
>
> if you want the vg to be detected whenever you attach the external drive
> then  a udev rule with a RUN= instruction (that runs pvscan and 
> vgscan) might do this for you.
>
>> There's something in the netfs script, but from what I can
>> unconvolute (comments in code are a Good Thing[tm]), it's not what
>> I'm looking for. I can write my own init script, but I was wondering
>> if there's already a facility to do it that I've missed, I prefer to
>> use the Fedora Way if it exists.
>
>
> incidentally, *why* have you put a volumegroup on an external disk? 
> Seems like an odd thing to do.
>

Why wouldn't I?  It's a 2TB raid array, I want the flexibility that LVM 
offers.  I've been using LVM since AIX 3.2, I don't know why anyone 
wouldn't use it.  :-)