Bug#578272: linux-image-2.6.32-3-686: Enabling Host Protected Area leads to LVM failure

[Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:02:54AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-04-18 at 22:10 +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 05:37:58PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2010-04-18 at 16:17 +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> > > > Package: linux-2.6
> > > > Version: 2.6.32-9
> > > > Severity: normal
> > > > 
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > Going from 2.6.30 to 2.6.32, I can no longer mount my LVM-based
> > > > partition on my secondary harddisk, I get the following error when I try
> > > > to run e.g. vgchange:
> > > > 
> > > > nighthawk~$ LANG=C sudo vgchange -a y 
> > > >   2 logical volume(s) in volume group "nighthawk" now active
> > > >   device-mapper: resume ioctl failed: Invalid argument
> > > >   Unable to resume data-data (254:3)
> > > >   1 logical volume(s) in volume group "data" now active
> > > > nighthawk~$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/data-data /mnt
> > > > mount: /dev/mapper/data-data already mounted or /mnt busy
> > > > 
> > > > This is the corresponding kernel error in syslog:
> > > > 
> > > > Apr 18 15:17:02 nighthawk kernel: [   20.713326] device-mapper: table: 254:3: hdc too small for target: start=384, len=78135296, dev_size=71762930
> > > > 
> > > > It turns out this is because contrary to linux-image-2.6.30-2-686,
> > > > 2.6.32 does not disable HPA:
> > > [...]
> > > 
> > > Is there a partition table on /dev/hdc?
> > 
> > No, it seems to be a direct LVM image/partition which spans the whole
> > disk.
> 
> Then I don't know why the HPA was disabled previously.  It should not be
> disabled by default as some BIOSes will overwrite data in the HPA in
> some circumstances (possibly only on matched HDs).  There is a
> workaround for cases where an HD was partitioned while the HPA was
> disabled: if a partition is found to extend into the HPA then it will
> automatically be disabled.
> 
> You should be able to disable the HPA for this disk by following these
> steps:
> 
> 1. Create a file under /etc/modprobe.d containing the lines:
>        options ide_core nohpa=1.0
>        options libata ignore_hpa=1
> 2. Run 'update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.32-3-686'
> 3. Reboot

Thanks, that has worked fine.

I guess it was my fault to create the PV without caring about the
partitioning, but this was a standard ThinkPad harddisk I wanted to put
into use as a secondary harddrive and which I just ran lvm2 on - I
didn't expect HPA to intefere (nor did I know what it was).


Michael