Hello I would like to understand how to move a LVM VG from one machine to another, when the disk to be moved contains filesystems key to the source system. I have read section 13.6 of the LVM HOWTO which talks about moving VGs. However the context of my situation is I am cannibalising an old machine and moving the VG that contains the LVs mounted on /, swap and /home of the source machine. That, apart from the non-LVM /boot partition, is all that is on this SSD.
The disk will not be the primary disk on the new machine, and the new machine's /, swap and /home will be elsewhere, but I will want to be able to access the current contents of the disk from the old machine on the new machine for a period of time before I decide to wipe it. I feel like I can't follow the instructions in the HOWTO because it wants me to unmount the file systems, export the LVs and so on, on the old machine before moving the disk, and I don't see how I can do that on a system that is expecting to use those file systems to operate. I thought of booting a live system from a USB stick, so the affected LVs aren't mounted or in use, but then I'll face the problem of how to get the live system to be aware of the LVM setup existing on the SSD. I guess the bottom line is I am missing some understanding of how LVM works in detail, and in particular how a machine that didn't create a particular VG and its contents can nonetheless be made to recognise it. Can anyone fill me in? Thanks Mark
