LVM restore of logical volume not working: merging of snapshot will occur on next activation

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on April 13th 2021 - Listed in LXC Linux LVM

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Using LXC containers with logical volumes (LV) is a handy way to quickly restore a complete container to a previous state. See Reverting / Restoring to a LVM snapshot as a rollback scenario for more information.

However if the LV in question is still in use, the snapshot merging process is somewhat confusing.

Creating the snapshot

Within a LXC container, an application was upgraded. Prior to this, a LV snapshot was taken.

root@host:~# lvcreate -L10G -s -n wikisnapshot /dev/vglxc/inf-wiki01-t
  Using default stripesize 64.00 KiB.
  Logical volume "wikisnapshot" created.

This can be seen by using lvs:

root@host:~# lvs
  LV                  VG       Attr       LSize   Pool Origin       Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  inf-wiki01-t        vglxc    owi-aos---  60.00g                                                
  wikisnapshot        vglxc    swi-a-s---  10.00g      inf-wiki01-t 35.19

After the application upgrade, it turned out that the new version caused problems so a restore was required.

Restoring the snapshot: No progress?

After the LXC container was shut down, the lvconvert command was run to merge the snapshot back into the logical volume:

root@host:~# lvconvert --merge /dev/vglxc/wikisnapshot
  Can't merge until origin volume is closed.
  Merging of snapshot vglxc/wikisnapshot will occur on next activation of vglxc/inf-wiki01-t.

Usually the merging progress would be immediately shown here. It was at this point I realized that I forgot to umount the filesystem!

root@host:~# df -h | grep wiki
/dev/mapper/vglxc-inf--wiki01--t        ext4          59G   43G   14G  76% /var/lib/lxc/inf-wiki01-t/rootfs

After umount the file system, lvconvert was run again, but this time a warning showed up:

root@host:~# umount /var/lib/lxc/inf-wiki01-t/rootfs
root@host:~# lvconvert --merge /dev/vglxc/wikisnapshot
  Command on LV vglxc/wikisnapshot is invalid on LV with properties: lv_is_merging_cow .
  Command not permitted on LV vglxc/wikisnapshot.

Troubleshooting and manually launching the merge

Interestingly, another lvs would not show the snapshot anymore:

root@host:~# lvs
  LV                  VG       Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  inf-wiki01-t        vglxc    Owi-a-s---  60.00g

However the LV now shows up with a capital O in the attribute. According to the man page, this means that the origin LV is being merged with the snapshot:

        The lv_attr bits are:

       1  Volume type: (C)ache, (m)irrored, (M)irrored without initial sync, (o)rigin, (O)rigin with merging snapshot,  (r)aid,
          (R)aid  without  initial sync, (s)napshot, merging (S)napshot, (p)vmove, (v)irtual, mirror or raid (i)mage, mirror or
          raid (I)mage out-of-sync, mirror (l)og device, under (c)onversion, thin (V)olume,  (t)hin  pool,  (T)hin  pool  data,
          v(d)o pool, v(D)o pool data, raid or pool m(e)tadata or pool metadata spare.

However no progress whatsoever is showing up. Does this mean the merging is in progress or nothing is happening right now?

The answer is: The merging is delayed, otherwise the progress would be showing up using the lvs command.

In order that the snapshot merge can start, the LV must not be used or mounted by anything; # open value of the LV must be 0:

root@host:~# lvdisplay /dev/vglxc/inf-wiki01-t
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vglxc/inf-wiki01-t
  LV Name                inf-wiki01-t
  VG Name                vglxc
  LV UUID                ngQJTX-9IfN-VWSe-MNLe-US9O-Yf0E-jmLQeU
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time nzzinfr-lxc02-test, 2017-03-10 14:46:47 +0100
  LV snapshot status     source of
                         wikisnapshot [active]
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                60.00 GiB
  Current LE             15360
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           253:6

The snapshot merging can then be triggered by a refresh:

root@host:~# lvchange  --refresh vglxc

As soon as this command was executed, lvs now showed a percentage value on the Data% column:

root@host:~# lvs
  LV                  VG       Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  inf-wiki01-t        vglxc    Owi-a-s---  60.00g             38.01

This value steadily decreased, until no value was shown anymore and the O attribute disappeared as well:

root@host:~# lvs
  LV                  VG       Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  inf-wiki01-t        vglxc    Owi-a-s---  60.00g             33.06

root@host:~# lvs
  LV                  VG       Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  inf-wiki01-t        vglxc    -wi-a-----  60.00g

The file system could now be mounted and the container started again. Restore completed.

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