Missing partition table on Linux/RAID/LVM/ext4

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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krambjas
Posts: 2
Joined: 19 Jul 2017, 14:47

Missing partition table on Linux/RAID/LVM/ext4

#1 Post by krambjas »

Need a little help with what appears to be a missing partition table on one drive. I was working on zeroing out some bad sectors on a drive that was showing read errors. As part of that, I ran 'fdisk -lu /dev/sdb' early on the session to check where partition blocks started and ended and got:

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root@mail:/# fdisk -lu /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0009bc71

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          63  1953520064   976760001   fd  Linux raid autodetect
Exactly as expected. I continued working on specific blocks and got through a couple. I was checking what block a specific file was in and happened to run fdisk again:

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root@mail:~# fdisk -lu /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
No idea what happened, but obviously something screwed up the partition table. I have not rebooted to everything work right now as expected, but this obviously has me a bit concerned that it will break as soon as I do.

/dev/sdb should have /dev/sdb1 on it. Then /dev/md2 is all of /dev/sdb1. Then I have an LVM2 spanned partition (RAID 0) sitting on top of that and spread across /dev/md2 and /dev/sdc1. That LV is mounted as /dev/maildata/data and is has an ext4 filesystem.

TestDisk immediately finds two missing partitions, but I'm not sure which to recover or how to ensure the parameters right. As I understand it, this needs to be exactly correct or my entire LV will stop working. I still have access to /etc/lvm/backup, and I've seen ways to recreate the format with that backup. I just don't fully understand the relationship between all of the devices on top of each other and what does what. Output from TestDisk:

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TestDisk 6.13, Data Recovery Utility, November 2011
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/sdb - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121602 255 63
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>D Linux LVM                0   1  1 121600 254 63 1953520002
 D Linux RAID               0   1  1 121600 254 63 1953520002 [md2]
I would guess only one of these are correct to add back to the partition table. Also, the start, end, and size look different than what came out of fdisk. I want to make sure I'm getting these exactly correct to ensure this works.

Could anyone provide some insight into what I need to do?

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cgrenier
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Re: Missing partition table on Linux/RAID/LVM/ext4

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Choose the raid partition, set it as P(rimary)

krambjas
Posts: 2
Joined: 19 Jul 2017, 14:47

Re: Missing partition table on Linux/RAID/LVM/ext4

#3 Post by krambjas »

Thanks so much for the response.

If I select this option, do I just need to write the partition table with what TestDisk found? That looks like it would end up slightly different size in sectors? What about the now missing disk identifier?

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cgrenier
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Re: Missing partition table on Linux/RAID/LVM/ext4

#4 Post by cgrenier »

Choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your Linux.

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