OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Storage => Topic started by: Glenn on February 09, 2023, 09:48:21 am

Title: Virtualbox - LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 09, 2023, 09:48:21 am
Hi all, I have my ArcaOS on VirtualBox, and everything was working fine, until yesterday when I saw that my second virtual HDD was not here anymore. I tried running LVM GUI, and nothing happened. Went to command line, and running the lvm command shows that it does not work anymore.. no idea why (maybe some INI cleanup at boot time that messed up an LVM-related setting?).
Has anyone experienced that problem ? If yes, how did you solve it?
Thanks for any help!
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Andi B. on February 09, 2023, 10:30:36 am
Mini-LVM (from the System folder/icon), lvmgui (java based) or lvm??? cli version?
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 09, 2023, 11:28:39 am
Mini-LVM (from the System folder/icon), lvmgui (java based) or lvm??? cli version?
The ones I tried were mini-LVM from system folder icon and lvm on command line (the screenshot). Have not tried the java based. Is there any hope it would work when the others do not?
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Andi B. on February 09, 2023, 12:34:36 pm
Quote
Is there any hope it would work when the others do not?
I don't think so, sorry. My question was because lvmgui need a working java environment while AFAIK Mini-LVM need some Rexx libraries.

Based on your comment I fear your problem is more fundamental. Unfortunately I'm out of ideas.
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Remy on February 09, 2023, 01:38:02 pm
Hum !

I got one time this kind of message and it was because lvm was already open by an other process not stopped...
Check running processes if this could help.
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on February 09, 2023, 03:02:15 pm
Any chance the LIBPATH stuff got messed up somehow?

What happens if you "cd" to let's say \os2\dll and try to fire it up from there?

lvmgui.cmd is in \os2, and if you start that up it'll look for lvmgui.zip in your CLASSPATH or directly in \os2\javaapps.
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Roderick Klein on February 09, 2023, 03:05:21 pm
Any chance the LIBPATH stuff got messed up somehow?

What happens if you "cd" to let's say \os2\dll and try to fire it up from there?

lvmgui.cmd is in \os2, and if you start that up it'll look for lvmgui.zip in your CLASSPATH or directly in \os2\javaapps.

If OS2\DLL would not be correctly in the libpath OS/2 would most not even start up...

Roderick
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Roderick Klein on February 09, 2023, 03:10:12 pm
Mini-LVM (from the System folder/icon), lvmgui (java based) or lvm??? cli version?
The ones I tried were mini-LVM from system folder icon and lvm on command line (the screenshot). Have not tried the java based. Is there any hope it would work when the others do not?

All not going to help. LVM.DLL can be loaded but for some reason the LVM dll can not access the disc somehow.
Hence wording it failed to open the LVM engine. Its not an issue of not being able to load the DLL.
Minilvm, lvm.exe and the java version all use lvm.dll so they will all have the same resuit.

Hmmm interesting.

Did you update to Virtualbox 7 ?

Roderick
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 09, 2023, 04:31:24 pm
Mini-LVM (from the System folder/icon), lvmgui (java based) or lvm??? cli version?
The ones I tried were mini-LVM from system folder icon and lvm on command line (the screenshot). Have not tried the java based. Is there any hope it would work when the others do not?

All not going to help. LVM.DLL can be loaded but for some reason the LVM dll can not access the disc somehow.
Hence wording it failed to open the LVM engine. Its not an issue of not being able to load the DLL.
Minilvm, lvm.exe and the java version all use lvm.dll so they will all have the same resuit.

Hmmm interesting.

Did you update to Virtualbox 7 ?

Roderick


Hi Roderick.. Yes I updated to Virtualbox 7, but quite a bit ago, and it had been working fine until yesterday...
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Rich Walsh on February 09, 2023, 05:23:07 pm
To my fellow posters: if you don't know the answer, please keep your hands off the keyboard! Ill-considered, *untested* answers that send people down deadends are not "helpful".

Glenn, Remy offered one of two likely reasons for this (LVM engine already open).

The other is that your 2nd disk isn't using an MBR layout. To keep LVM engine from destroying disks laid-out using GPT & LUKS, a crude fix was added: if it finds one of these disks, it won't even start the LVM engine. The solution is either recreate/repartition as MBR or just blank the first 63 sectors of the disk. If this still doesn't fix the issue, I can PM you a workaround to get rid of the message (AYOR!).

FWIW... in AOS 5.1, GPT disks will be supported and any other type of layout will be hidden by the disk drivers, so this problem shouldn't arise.
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on February 09, 2023, 06:24:11 pm
Rich!

To my fellow posters: if you don't know the answer, please keep your hands off the keyboard! Ill-considered, *untested* answers that send people down deadends are not "helpful"...

Wow man...who messed around with your breakfast cereal today???

Dude, take a "chill pill" if you must...no one on this forum provides feedback with a "guaranteed to work" clause, but for sure these are all intended to be (hopefully) useful suggestions.

What is going on here recently...???
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on February 09, 2023, 06:26:15 pm
Roderick,

Any chance the LIBPATH stuff got messed up somehow?

What happens if you "cd" to let's say \os2\dll and try to fire it up from there?

lvmgui.cmd is in \os2, and if you start that up it'll look for lvmgui.zip in your CLASSPATH or directly in \os2\javaapps.

If OS2\DLL would not be correctly in the libpath OS/2 would most not even start up...

Roderick

Sure...reasonable conclusion on your part, but did I actually say THAT "OS2\DLL" got removed from LIBPATH???

I think not!
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Roderick Klein on February 09, 2023, 08:34:46 pm
Roderick,

Any chance the LIBPATH stuff got messed up somehow?

What happens if you "cd" to let's say \os2\dll and try to fire it up from there?

lvmgui.cmd is in \os2, and if you start that up it'll look for lvmgui.zip in your CLASSPATH or directly in \os2\javaapps.

Wel what can "wrong with your libpath". The DLL's in in \os2\dll are in that location unless you copy them manually to different places.
That could cause issue's. However I have never seen anybody do that. So what else could "wrong with your libpath".
The error message does not point in that direction.

The issue is that the LVM engine is having an issue. Its a DLL loading issue.

Roderick

If OS2\DLL would not be correctly in the libpath OS/2 would most not even start up...

Roderick

Sure...reasonable conclusion on your part, but did I actually say THAT "OS2\DLL" got removed from LIBPATH???

I think not!
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Roderick Klein on February 09, 2023, 08:35:38 pm
Hi all, I have my ArcaOS on VirtualBox, and everything was working fine, until yesterday when I saw that my second virtual HDD was not here anymore. I tried running LVM GUI, and nothing happened. Went to command line, and running the lvm command shows that it does not work anymore.. no idea why (maybe some INI cleanup at boot time that messed up an LVM-related setting?).
Has anyone experienced that problem ? If yes, how did you solve it?
Thanks for any help!

Run from an OS/2  command line LVM /startlog:C:\lvm.log. Then we can see what is possibly happening.

Roderick
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Martin Iturbide on February 09, 2023, 08:46:30 pm
Hi

I hope that my suggestions does not sound dangerous.
1) I think it will be good to take an "testlog generic (http://88watts.net/dlfile.php?F=testlog-)" report and post it here to see how ArcaOS recognizes the HDDs.
2) Can you double check the attached virtual drives on the VirtualBox host, just to be sure you are pointing right to the two virtual HDD files?

Regards
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Alex Taylor on February 10, 2023, 12:59:56 am
Rich's suggestions are the likeliest ones.

You said you tried MiniLVM, but you didn't say what error it reported.  Unlike the command-line LVM, MiniLVM will normally give you an informative error message about what went wrong (and a help button pointing you to more information). I suggest you see what it says.

(FTR, MiniLVM doesn't use REXX at all.)
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Andi B. on February 10, 2023, 08:07:06 am
Quote
(FTR, MiniLVM doesn't use REXX at all.)
Thanks for clarification. Do you use standard PM windows programmed in C? With URE created resource files or manually edited text files? Just curious....
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Lars on February 10, 2023, 09:29:47 am
Move back to the latest 6.1.x Version of Virtualbox.

Version 7.0.6 does odd things. I can still start my eComStation installation but not my ArcaOS 5.0.6 installation. It will trap early with a "SYS2027" error ("Insert a system diskette and restart the system").

EDIT: I can also say that 6.1.42 does not work. The last one that worked ok was 6.1.40. What I could observe is that with 6.1.40, I can attach my (bootable) ArcaOS virtual hard drive as a 3. hard disk to my eComStation installation and it would boot from the eCS virtual (1st) hard drive and I could then run a chkdsk on the ArcaOS partition.

With 6.1.42, it would instead attempt to boot from the (broken) 3rd hard drive (ArcaOS) and of course, fail on that.

Now after reverting to VirtualBox 6.1.40, my ArcaOS partition is unfortunately broken to the extent that chkdsk will no longer do:

[e:\]chkdsk e: /F
The current hard disk drive is: E:
The type of file system for the disk is JFS.
The JFS file system program has been started.
JFS0068: CHKDSK  Superblock is corrupt and cannot be repaired becaus
primary and secondary copies are corrupt.  CHKDSK CANNOT CONTINUE.


There must be some change from 6.1.40 to 6.1.42 and likely also to 7.0.6 that led to a change in disk ordering on boot.


Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 10, 2023, 05:44:07 pm
And without touching anything, the system works again without problem - LVM starts (on command line and mini-LVM), the drive is recognized, etc.

This is far fetched, but this problem could it have a relationship with NetDrive? I noticed that it happened when my DHCP did not get an address, but when it does get one, then there is no problem. Either that is a pure coincidence, or there is something in the network that messes up the LVM, and I can only see NetDrive as a culprit..
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 10, 2023, 08:39:16 pm
Now back at home... and again LVM does not work, no second drive - even if DHCP manages to find the network. So really puzzled as to why it would work sometimes and not other times..
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Remy on February 10, 2023, 09:24:51 pm
Now back at home... and again LVM does not work, no second drive - even if DHCP manages to find the network. So really puzzled as to why it would work sometimes and not other times..

Do you have programs that display or identifies devices D, CD ROM etc and/or drive letters....
If yes, it may be possible it uses LVM (may be LVM rexx dll) 
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Dave Yeo on February 10, 2023, 10:38:06 pm
Does the second (and first) drive show up in hardware manager
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 10, 2023, 11:25:05 pm
Does the second (and first) drive show up in hardware manager
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Martin Iturbide on February 11, 2023, 02:30:25 pm
Hi Glenn

There is an ongoing issue with VirtualBox 7, ArcaOS and vitual HDD. I haven't been personally affected of it.
Rich87 opened a ticket on Virtualbox: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21334
But the issue that I found is that he is mixing UEFI, NVME and the HDD bug, which may confuse the ticket.

I use the virtual HDD on VirtualBox as IDE PIXX4 or ACHI.

Just a wild shot, do you want to try to attach your 2nd HDD virtual drive to a new SATA controller? (like the picture). (always take a backup)
And see if later run some fix tool on the 2nd HDD.  Just to see what happens. I would like to know if the bug is related to IDE, SATA or both controllers.

Regards
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Martin Iturbide on February 11, 2023, 02:54:40 pm
EDIT: I can also say that 6.1.42 does not work. The last one that worked ok was 6.1.40. What I could observe is that with 6.1.40, I can attach my (bootable) ArcaOS virtual hard drive as a 3. hard disk to my eComStation installation and it would boot from the eCS virtual (1st) hard drive and I could then run a chkdsk on the ArcaOS partition.

With 6.1.42, it would instead attempt to boot from the (broken) 3rd hard drive (ArcaOS) and of course, fail on that.

....

There must be some change from 6.1.40 to 6.1.42 and likely also to 7.0.6 that led to a change in disk ordering on boot.

Here it is 6.1 changelog: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1
There are some SCSI changes, but I guess are unrelated.

Here it is 7.0 Changelog: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-7.0
Some SCSI changes on 7.0.4, but again, nothing related to IDE or SATA.

Regards
Title: Re: Virtualbox - LVM stopped working
Post by: Glenn on February 11, 2023, 03:21:10 pm
Well the problem has changed a bit today. My D drive is still inaccessible, but I could start the LVM, and somehow it appears that the D drive was renamed to E, but E being already taken, that cannot work...
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Roderick Klein on February 12, 2023, 08:50:52 pm
And without touching anything, the system works again without problem - LVM starts (on command line and mini-LVM), the drive is recognized, etc.

This is far fetched, but this problem could it have a relationship with NetDrive? I noticed that it happened when my DHCP did not get an address, but when it does get one, then there is no problem. Either that is a pure coincidence, or there is something in the network that messes up the LVM, and I can only see NetDrive as a culprit..
Netdrive is not involved.

Roderick
Title: Re: Virtualbox - LVM stopped working
Post by: Martin Iturbide on February 13, 2023, 01:38:32 pm
Hi

I have not experienced the issue with VirtualBox 7.0.6 yet.

Is it possible to reproduce the bug on VBox 7.0.4, 7.0.6?
Does it only applies for IDE, SATA or both?
Can we define what is the bug result, what is exactly happening to the virtual HDD drive?
 -- JFS0068: CHKDSK  Superblock gets corrupt ?

I want to see if we can have a repeatable bug procedure to report it on the ticket.

Regards
Title: Re: LVM stopped working
Post by: Alex Taylor on February 16, 2023, 05:32:13 am
Quote
(FTR, MiniLVM doesn't use REXX at all.)
Thanks for clarification. Do you use standard PM windows programmed in C? With URE created resource files or manually edited text files? Just curious....

It's straight-up C and PM-OS/2 APIs. The resource files were originally created using dlgedit but are manually edited and maintained since.

I used a similar approach for LVMPM, although the main window is created programatically (and uses various custom controls): https://github.com/altsan/os2-lvmpm
(I really should get back to this program at some point, it currently lacks proper GPT support.)