Package: lvm2 Version: 2.02.26-1+b1 Severity: normal Severity note: Since the problem renders the system unbootable, and is very hard to recover from without expertise, this might warrant higher severity. Since the current behavior seems to be by design, it might warrant wishlist severity (or being closed with a documentation change only).
I set root=/dev/daisy/root in grub (daisy is an LVM2 volume group and root is a logical volume in that group), and found that I was unable to boot the system from the initramfs produced by update-initramfs. The error was something like "waiting on root file system." I believe the problem is in these tests in /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/lvm2 (which belongs to this package): # Make sure that we have a d-m path vg=${vg#/dev/mapper/} if [ "$vg" = "$1" ]; then return 1 fi # Make sure that the device includes at least one dash if [ "$(echo -n "$vg" | tr -d -)" = "$vg" ]; then return 1 fi When I changed to root=/dev/mapper/daisy-root, booting succeeded. The LVM HOWTO mostly employs the /dev/daisy/root style, not the /dev/mapper/daisy-root style, so it seems likely others will try the first approach. Maybe there's a good reason for those tests, but it seems to me a more permissive policy would avoid the very serious situation of an unbootable system. If you think it best to preserve the current behavior, it would be helpful to document it, e.g., in README.Debian. I couldn't find any documentation other than the source code on the current setup. man lvcreate doesn't seem to say what path(s) in /dev get generated; the one example (for snapshot) uses the /dev/volgroup/volname style. It would be useful, even aside from the booting issues, for the man page to be more explicit about where to find LV's in /dev, at least for a standard Debian system (I realize with udev almost anything is possible). The code cited above may also account for some of the other reported "can't boot" failures, e.g., 409171, 409243, 351679. However, 409243 clearly uses the /dev/mapper style. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable'), (50, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages lvm2 depends on: ii libc6 2.6.1-1+b1 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libdevmapper1.02.1 2:1.02.20-2 The Linux Kernel Device Mapper use ii libncurses5 5.6+20071013-1 Shared libraries for terminal hand ii libreadline5 5.2-3 GNU readline and history libraries ii libselinux1 2.0.15-2+b1 SELinux shared libraries ii libsepol1 2.0.3-1+b1 Security Enhanced Linux policy lib lvm2 recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]