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I have a physical disk from a HPUX system that I need to access from a Debian Linux for ia64 system. From the hpux-lvm-tools project I have the tools to access the HPUX LVMs (Linux LVM has a different format) and I also have the freevxfs driver.

I know beforehand that the disk has three partitions, and that the biggest one contains LVM volumes, and some of those are VxFS filesystems.

I can see the partitions:

# cat /proc/partitions

major minor  #blocks  name

   8       32  143374744 sdc
   8       33     512000 sdc1
   8       34  142452736 sdc2
   8       35     409600 sdc3

It finds a VG in one of the disk partitions:

# ./vgscan_hpux
On /dev/sdc2 - vg1328874723

# ./pvdisplay_hpux /dev/sdc2

PV General Information
----------------------
VG Creation Time        Fri Feb 10 12:52:03 2012
Physical Volume ID      1766760336 1328874723
Volume Group ID         1766760336 1328874723
Physical Volumes in VG  1766760336 1328874723
VG Actication Mode      0 - LOCAL
PE Size                 64 MBs

Lvol sizes
----------
lvol1 - 8 Extents - 512 MBs
lvol2 - 192 Extents - 12288 MBs
lvol3 - 16 Extents - 1024 MBs
  ...
lvol21 - 13 Extents - 832 MBs
lvol22 - 224 Extents - 14336 MBs
lvol23 - 16 Extents - 1024 MBs

Then I activate that VG and some new devices appear in my system:

# ./pvactivate_hpux /dev/sdc2
VG vg1328874723 Activated succesfully with 23 lvols.
#
# ll /dev/mapper/
total 0
crw------- 1 root root 10, 59 Nov 26 16:08 control
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol1 -> ../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol10 -> ../dm-9
  ...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol8 -> ../dm-7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol9 -> ../dm-8

But:

# mount /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18 /mnt/tmp
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
# mount -t vxfs /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18 /mnt/tmp
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

# lsmod |grep vxfs
freevxfs               23905  0

I also tried to identify the raw data with the file command and it just says 'data':

# file -s /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18
/dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18: symbolic link to `../dm-17'
# file -s /dev/dm-17
/dev/dm-17: data
#

Any clues?

golimar
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  • It would be nice if you added vgdisplay for the vg1328874723. Also, take a look at /proc/filesystems. There is no vxfs in Linux, but it might be called 'freevxfs' instead. – mdpc Nov 26 '12 at 18:44
  • I don't have a vgdisplay_hpux utility, only pvactivate_hpux pvdisplay_hpux and vgscan_hpux. The standard vgdisplay doesn't recognize my VG. /proc/filesystems shows vxfs (without 'nodev') – golimar Nov 27 '12 at 10:29
  • Try running fdisk -l against the devmapper and see what kind of filesystem it reports. – pauska Dec 10 '12 at 16:10
  • It says "Disk /dev/dm-17 doesn't contain a valid partition table". I tried several LVs – golimar Dec 13 '12 at 11:09

1 Answers1

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In the project page doesn't tell anything about which layout of VxFS are supported.

So I suggest you first check on your HPUX the VxFS layout

fstyp -v /dev/vg00/lvol3 | grep -i version

Then check if your VxFS layout version is supported by hpux-lvm-tools.

PS1: Partition 1: EFI, Partition 2 PV of OS, Partition 3 may contain support utilities. PS2: I can't see the link to post this as a comment instead of answer.

RuBiCK
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  • Thanks, I'll try that. I think you need more reputation to add comments – golimar May 20 '13 at 09:05
  • That command says "version 5", however I can't find which versions are supported in the FreeVxFS documentation – golimar May 20 '13 at 09:47
  • Ask to the developers of FreeVxFS. BTW if you are working in a production environment, I do not recommend do you use FreeVxFS. It could be dangerous. Is it absolutely necessary you present HPUX disk to Linux server? – RuBiCK Jun 09 '13 at 17:02
  • No, we just want to extract some files from a server that is not working anymore – golimar Jun 10 '13 at 07:41
  • If you could check the veritas version in your HPUX server, why you can't send the files over the netwok? FTP, SCP, NFS.... :) – RuBiCK Jun 13 '13 at 08:33
  • That's another machine identical to the dead one – golimar Jun 13 '13 at 08:45
  • If the disks are from SAN, present to the other HPUX server. Could you? – RuBiCK Jun 18 '13 at 15:49
  • I'm remembering.... linux does not activate lvs automatically when vg becomes activated. You you could try to execute lvchange -a y lvnameX Also you could post the output of "vgdisplay -v vg1328874723" to see detailed information. – RuBiCK Jun 21 '13 at 08:35
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    Those are the normal Linux LVM commands, but for HPUX-type LVM there is only pvactivate_hpux, pvdisplay_hpux and vgscan_hpux. I checked the source code of freevxfs and I think it doesn't support VXFS 5... – golimar Jun 24 '13 at 07:30