Can not mount old hd after new installation because of multiple VGs found with the same name skipping xubuntu-vg
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| base-installer (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
This is an old one a a really totally destroying showstopper, it leads to this:
Users after installing a new version of Ubuntu on a new hard disk can not access their files on the old hard disk because the lvm volume has THE SAME NAME! The procedure to rename the vg is absolutely not doable by an average user, much too complicated with editing grub.cfg etc.
I am really disappointed by this. The installer makes it easy for users to encrypt their hard drives - but then this comes with such an annoying time bomb, leaving people with an unsolvable problem, not able to access their data.
The installer should of course create lvm names with some random part, so it is no problem to mount your old disk and copy your data.
Thinking about it one more question comes up: why on earth is LVM not able to mount volumes with the same name? It is using that user given string as an ID? Really? What are people with hundreds of archive disks doing? They have a notebook with all the volume names, so they now which name not to pick for a new hard disk? come on...
| Bio Mon (biomon) wrote | #1 |
To the group that produced this extremely short-sighted install procedure - here is one thing that you can do to save your honor.
The procedure to get out of that described situation is so extremely annoying waste of time for non-guru users that I think it is appropriate to demand some remedy from the producer - you are faced here with a situation where people can not access their data because of your decision to use always the same name for a lvm volume group - I believe that is enough motivation to put some true effort into this issue to save the name "Ubuntu". Similar to a car producing company that has to recall lots of cars because of some production error Ubuntu should deliver some kind of repair script that comes with the installer.
Please add an option to the installer to make old Ubuntu installs that were created with this installer accessible by changing the volume group name and making appropriate changes to /etc/fstab and grub files - and please TEST that with real people and real installations before!
It seems like nobody @Ubuntu puts some effort into testing these kind of real life scenarios.
This lvm mis-configuration is such an obvious footgun that would have been easy to avoid if just one person tried to add an old system hard drive to a newly installed system - a very expected real life situation - many people do migrate to new systems with a new hard disk and then copying data from the old hard disk to the new one is a totally expected thing to happen.
Please put more real life testing into your production workflows.
BTW there also should exist some kind of "migration assistant" that would copy all the settings from an old $HOME - its kind of annoying that these stupid things still have to be done manually, despite the fact that it would be very easy for you to automate this. You are missing one low hanging fruit to user happiness here.