If you need to access some files on a partition that was formatted with LVM, you can follow this procedure:
1. Get a live CD and boot from it. Here I’m using a Kubuntu live CD, which means all my commands will be done with sudo. Otherwise run from root.
2. Install LVM
sudo apt-get install lvm2
3. Find your partition with fdisk
sudo fdisk -l
4. Use pvscan to scan all disks for physical volume
sudo pvscan PV /dev/sda5 VG kubuntu-vg lvm2 [111.55 GiB / 0 free] Total: 1 [111.55 GiB] / in use: 1 [111.55 GiB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ]
5. Use vgscan to scan all disks for volume groups
sudo vgscan Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Found volume group "kubuntu-vg" using metadata type lvm
6. Activate all volume groups available.
sudo vgchange -a y 2 logical volume(s) in volume group "kubuntu-vg" now active
7. Use lvscan to scan all disks for logical volumes
sudo lvscan ACTIVE '/dev/kubuntu-vg/root' [103.55 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/kubuntu-vg/swap_1' [8.00 GiB] inherit
8. Create a mounting point and mount the partition that you need to access
sudo mkdir /mnt/kubuntu-vg-root sudo mount /dev/kubuntu-vg/root /mnt/kubuntu-vg-root
9. You can access the partition in the directory and can backup your data
This information was initially found on: http://www.linuxwave.info/2007/11/mounting-lvm-disk-using-ubuntu-livecd.html
Leave a Reply