Somebody in the thread at some point said: >> Before doing any more damage, >> make at least one disk image of what you have. >> If a disk image is a file of a larger drive, >> you can use loopback to examine it. >> If you want to make changes, don't use your only copy. >> >> -- >> Mike hennebry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> "Horse guts never lie." -- Cherek Bear-Shoulders > > I'm not sure how to do that when I can't even mount the disk. you can use, eg, dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/home/fred/sda1-image to get a bit-for-bit copy of the /dev/sda1 partition as a file on some other filesystem... only do it when the filesystem being copied is unmounted. If you don't have recent backups of the important content, that was great advice to rip a copy of your partition(s) before you meddle. > Any suggestions on what to do next? I think job #1 is to start hating on LVM. I didn't really understand what you have done to your system and if you took a dump on the ext3 filesystem inside the LVM wrapper or not, or if you merely trashed the LVM metadata. But either way at this bad moment you are in poorly charted territory and not much help is forthcoming if my experience was any guide. That's *exactly* the situation you *don't* want your *data* of all things to be in. I took from this that LVM is just a bomb waiting to go off and have removed it from all my boxes, and periodically rant here to a perfect disinterest from anyone capable to change it that LVM should NOT be on by default for installs. I documented here: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2006-June/msg03297.html how I recovered an ext3 filesystem from a trashed LVM partition, it's not trivial but it worked. If you have backups, you should instead give up and repartition and reformat your drive plain ext3 (if you are in the mood for taking advice, partition as a single / partition and maybe a little one for /boot first). -Andy
