Recovery disk using LVM2

[Anton Markov]

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> 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.

Actually, if I accidentally delete a file, I will want to be able to
start the system RO or maybe not mount the root file system at all. I
know RO can be accomplished via a kernel parameter, but there are other
times that I may need to boot without the root partition. I have had
INIT and other important libraries fail, and I would like to have
something like a Mindi boot disk, or Redhat's "Recovery CD". Also, I
need something to let me restore from a Mondo backup disk, so I need to
be able to see and recreate LVM/DeviceMapper volumes.

> 
> 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.
I have had problems with custom kernels not working with the LVM setup.
 Apparently there is more to the new LVM system than kernel support.
Has anyone had any luck compiling a custom kernel to use the new LVM setup?


Thanks.

- -- 
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

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