Failed Backup of LVM Configuration? We can help you.

We all can agree on how essential it is to have a backup for the data we possess.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several backup queries.

Today, let us discuss how to resolve a failed LVM Configuration Backup.

Failed Backup of LVM Configuration

Recently, we had a customer who had his backup running. He had 4 devices, which were backing up successfully.

However, he came across the error:

Failed backup of LVM configuration”

Assuming, it meant he couldn’t do a bare-metal restore, he made he had the latest version of R1Soft on both the backup server and the agent server.

In addition, he went ahead to Reboot systems, did a complete “yum update” on both systems, and rebooted again. But these couldn’t help him.

Cause and fixes

Generally, the older LVM code does not play well with the latest LVM2 configs inside RHEL 7.4

Suppose we use the configuration file from lvm2 >= 2.02.171 with any earlier lvm. Then all lvm utilities break with the error:

Invalid units specification

This happens because lvm.conf contains a new value:

The # Default value for –units argument.

units = “r”

Older version of LVM do not understand this and fail with this error message:

Invalid units specification

Moving ahead, let us see the methods our Support Techs suggest in order to solve this issue.

• Method 1

Mostly, the lvm.conf loads into memory at initialization time.

We cannot change this behavior by editing the file. It requires a reboot.

Commenting or editing that one line and rebooting resolves the issue.

• Method 2

On the other hand, we can replace our static binary with the new OS version in 7.4

a) mv /usr/sbin/r1soft/lib/lvm.static /usr/sbin/r1soft/lib/lvm.static.old
b) ln -s /sbin/lvm /usr/sbin/r1soft/lib/lvm.static

[Couldn’t fix the error? We can help you]

Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs fix the failed backup issue for our customers.