Point-and-Click Linux LVM Filesystem Workstation Backup, Part 1
Dealing with LVM UUID

A. Lizard
Thursday, May 24, 2007 11:01:45 AM
The problem with your new identical drive is that there are numeric IDs called uuids attached to the drive as a whole, the physical volume, and the logical volume. These IDs are supposed to be unique for each, so LVM won't recognize or deal correctly with two drives where any of the uuids are identical. It'll see one, but not the other. So you have to extract the uuids from the new backup drive, modify them, write them back to the backup drive. The good news is that knoppix seems to recognize the second drive created, not the original when it comes to having two drives open with the same uuids. You can identify what it actually did by seeing which LVM volumes are assigned to which drive.
Do not attempt to change the volume name until you've changed the UUIDs.
To find out what your volume IDs are, type:
root@1[/]# pvs; vgs; lvs
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/hda2 VolGroup00 lvm2 a- 152.56G 32.00M
VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree
VolGroup00 1 2 0 wz--n- 152.56G 32.00M
LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy%
LogVol00 VolGroup00 -wi-a- 151.53G
LogVol01 VolGroup00 -wi-a- 1.00G
Now plug in your backup drive, boot from Knoppix, and enter the next commands.
$ su
terrarium:/home/alizard# vgscan
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Found volume group "terrarium" using metadata type lvm2
terrarium:/home/alizard# vgcfgbackup -f terrarium.cfg terrarium
Volume group "terrarium" successfully backed up.
terrarium:/home/alizard# nano terrarium.cfg
nano terrarium.cfg
Opening the files will make access to the UUIDs possible. Increment the last character by one on all four of the UUIDs, e.g. on terrarium id, V becomes W, 1 becomes 2, etc. This is what the file looks like.
terrarium {
id = "Dpe3dB-xfce-BYvi-bu1U-OGP4-CHO3-cY5cgV"
. . .
physical_volumes {
pv0 {
id = "SNKs3k-hppI-ycTS-KSv1-qpEn-R9Dn-8I7rVg"
. . .
root {
id = "2yt2FJ-NZap-Bno5-aJ1i-EP3I-SxLv-aNQkZW"
. . .
swap_1 {
id = "kiIium-A8Qx-2oOO-EECP-E3gZ-RzIo-PsK6B8"
Close and save the file.
# pvcreate -ff --uuid Dpe3dB-xfce-BYvi-bu1U-OGP4-CHO3-cY5cgW --restorefile terrarium.cfg /dev/hda5
# vgcfgrestore -f terrarium.cfg terrarium
# vgchange -a y terrarium
Now change the LVM volumeID.
# vgrename userdrive userdrive-back
Next: From LiveCD to LiveCD-Backup »