Recovery disk using LVM2

[Ilya Palagin]

Anton Markov wrote:

...
> 
> When I switched over from Redhat to Debian two months ago, I also
> converted my system to use Logical Volume Manager Version 2 (LVM2) which
> comes with the 2.6 series of kernels.  Now, my system works fine, and I
> have no complaints about Debian or the 2.6 kernels, but I am concerned
> that I don't have a working recovery disk that would recognize the LVM2
> partitions or be able to recover them should something go wrong.
> 
...
What's the purpose of recovery disks?  They hardly help if one
accidentally deletes a file, or if a file system crashes because of the 
faulty hard drive. The only useful usage of recovery disks is rewriting 
of lilos's or grub's boot record after (re)installation of a poorly 
designed alternative OS, which doesn't recognize anything but its own 
stuff. All other problems are usually handled by journaling file systems.

Debian has `mkboot` utility for making boot floppies. There is a 
requirement - image kernel must fit 1.44 floppy, no initrd is allowed,
otherwise they both exceed 1.44MB. Thus, compile your own minimal
monolithic kernel and make a boot floppy with mkboot, pointing it to 
the "boot" kernel you've prepared.


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