LVM check during boot up

jim · #1 22nd January 2006, 08:41 PM

Now this is rather annoying. During the boot up of my notebook there is a check for lvm volumes and related stuff. Well i do not have a lvm partitioned drive. I partition my drive myself and such have no need for lvm. So how can I remove this check from the boot process?

gavinw6662 · #2 22nd January 2006, 11:00 PM

i just got FC4 to skip that by - A. partition the drive myself (like you) and then there is a RPM called LVM-tools or something like that - and I made sure to not install that.

Now if you have already done this - then it still checks for LVM's are boot - is that what you are refering too?? I haven't figured out how to remove that yet. I assume it is some sort of script somewhere.

Maybe a startup script - have you checked there??

jim · #3 23rd January 2006, 02:48 AM

I check for "system-config-lvm" and it isn't installed nor should i need to install it. There is some script some where. Honestly I havent really tried yet to look for it yet.

Yeah I thin kwere on the same page. it checks for lvm before udev is started. So not really sure on how to tackle this one.

brunson · #4 23rd January 2006, 02:59 AM

A quick "grep lvm /etc/*" points to rc.sysinit. It looks like the lvm code is dependent on /sbin/lvm.static being executable. "rpm -qf /sbin/lvm.static" says it belongs to lvm2, so I might say remove that, but mkinitrd is dependent on it, so that might not be advisable. If you're sure you don't need it, you might try "chmod -x /sbin/lvm.static" and see if that disables the check during sysinit.

jim · #5 23rd January 2006, 02:59 AM

well i did find this
/etc/lvm/lvm.conf

but nothing sticks out on how to turn the dam check off

jim · #6 23rd January 2006, 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brunson

A quick "grep lvm /etc/*" points to rc.sysinit. It looks like the lvm code is dependent on /sbin/lvm.static being executable. "rpm -qf /sbin/lvm.static" says it belongs to lvm2, so I might say remove that, but mkinitrd is dependent on it, so that might not be advisable. If you're sure you don't need it, you might try "chmod -x /sbin/lvm.static" and see if that disables the check during sysinit.

Yikes

maybe a bug filed would be better before I hose my system

brunson · #7 23rd January 2006, 03:08 AM

Or you could just ignore it, I think that's more appropriate than filing a bug report. You have the lvm2 package installed and most likely system-config-lvm. If those are installed, then it seems appropriate for the system to check if you have lvm partitions that need initializing.

I'm unsure why you think removing execute permission from that binary might hose your system if you know you aren't using lvm. Your FAQ's seem to inidicate that you have a modicum of clue, read rc.sysinit and if see what I'm talking about, I think you'd see that it's not a big issue. I'd do it to try it out for you myself, but I use LVM on all my systems.

jim · #8 23rd January 2006, 03:08 AM

Well i did it even though ths bug will be squashed in favor of other issues with lvm

Bug 178649 processed: unable to stop lvm from checking if there are logical volumes

w5set · #9 23rd January 2006, 10:30 PM

Actually it looks like its part of the kernel at boot time --module or compliled in.??
Have a look at the /boot/config_kernel_version_# file.

brunson · #10 23rd January 2006, 10:36 PM

My kernel configs only have "lvm" in a comment.

Code:

clotho(/boot)$ grep -i lvm config-$( uname -r )
# Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)

w5set · #11 23rd January 2006, 10:47 PM

it's what is right under that.
#
# Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)
#
CONFIG_MD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_MD=y
CONFIG_MD_LINEAR=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID0=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID1=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID10=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID5=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID6=m
CONFIG_MD_MULTIPATH=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=m
CONFIG_DM_CRYPT=m
CONFIG_DM_SNAPSHOT=m
CONFIG_DM_MIRROR=m
CONFIG_DM_ZERO=m
CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH=m
CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH_EMC=m

brunson · #12 23rd January 2006, 10:57 PM

I know how to read a config file:

Quote:

CONFIG_MD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_MD=y
CONFIG_MD_LINEAR=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID0=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID1=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID10=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID5=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID6=m
CONFIG_MD_MULTIPATH=m

Those are all multi-device drivers, not related to LVM.

Quote:

CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=m
CONFIG_DM_CRYPT=m
CONFIG_DM_SNAPSHOT=m
CONFIG_DM_MIRROR=m
CONFIG_DM_ZERO=m
CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH=m
CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH_EMC=m

Those are device mapper drivers, which may be used by LVM2, but are not LVM2.

Besides, they are all compiled as modules, so they should only be loaded as needed. I'm pretty sure that the key to the LVM check is in the rc.sysinit script.

w5set · #13 24th January 2006, 12:32 AM

my /etc directory is in a LVM
I'm to the chicken/egg point--I'm typically confuzed as usual.
But how does the kernel read the LVM before mounting it? (or any kind of File system)
I know my /boot is ef2 (or 3) so grub can read it and then hands stuff over to the kernel.
I thought (probably wrongly as usual) the filesystem had to be mounted before being read.

brunson · #14 24th January 2006, 02:39 AM

That's a good point. I just checked the partition table on my box and the partition type of my LVM disk is "Linux raid autodetect". That must key the kernel in to load the dm modules to detect and read the partition. I can see lines in my kernel messages where md detects my raid0, but my root filesystem is not on it. It just detects my drive, then there's no more messages about hdd until it's reading the root partition off hdd3.

Interesting. Still, there's no reference to LVM in my dmesg, so I'm still thinking the messages that jim was asking about are coming from the LVM startup in rc.sysinit.

gavinw6662 · #15 24th January 2006, 06:45 AM

there's got to be a startup script somewhere that runs this. I thought maybe somewhere in inittab - but it doesn't look like it. It is interesting to find out where it is. But like mentioned before, I am sure it is best to ignore it - as Redhat has made LVM it's default install. So I am sure it is in a script somewhere that I wouldn't even think of.