I have a physical disk from a HPUX system that I need to access from a Debian Linux for ia64 system. From the hpux-lvm-tools project I have the tools to access the HPUX LVMs (Linux LVM has a different format) and I also have the freevxfs driver.
I know beforehand that the disk has three partitions, and that the biggest one contains LVM volumes, and some of those are VxFS filesystems.
I can see the partitions:
# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
8 32 143374744 sdc
8 33 512000 sdc1
8 34 142452736 sdc2
8 35 409600 sdc3
It finds a VG in one of the disk partitions:
# ./vgscan_hpux
On /dev/sdc2 - vg1328874723
# ./pvdisplay_hpux /dev/sdc2
PV General Information
----------------------
VG Creation Time Fri Feb 10 12:52:03 2012
Physical Volume ID 1766760336 1328874723
Volume Group ID 1766760336 1328874723
Physical Volumes in VG 1766760336 1328874723
VG Actication Mode 0 - LOCAL
PE Size 64 MBs
Lvol sizes
----------
lvol1 - 8 Extents - 512 MBs
lvol2 - 192 Extents - 12288 MBs
lvol3 - 16 Extents - 1024 MBs
...
lvol21 - 13 Extents - 832 MBs
lvol22 - 224 Extents - 14336 MBs
lvol23 - 16 Extents - 1024 MBs
Then I activate that VG and some new devices appear in my system:
# ./pvactivate_hpux /dev/sdc2
VG vg1328874723 Activated succesfully with 23 lvols.
#
# ll /dev/mapper/
total 0
crw------- 1 root root 10, 59 Nov 26 16:08 control
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol1 -> ../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol10 -> ../dm-9
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol8 -> ../dm-7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 26 16:38 vg1328874723-lvol9 -> ../dm-8
But:
# mount /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18 /mnt/tmp
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
# mount -t vxfs /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18 /mnt/tmp
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
# lsmod |grep vxfs
freevxfs 23905 0
I also tried to identify the raw data with the file command and it just says 'data':
# file -s /dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18
/dev/mapper/vg1328874723-lvol18: symbolic link to `../dm-17'
# file -s /dev/dm-17
/dev/dm-17: data
#
Any clues?
In the project page doesn't tell anything about which layout of VxFS are supported.
So I suggest you first check on your HPUX the VxFS layout
Then check if your VxFS layout version is supported by hpux-lvm-tools.
PS1: Partition 1: EFI, Partition 2 PV of OS, Partition 3 may contain support utilities. PS2: I can't see the link to post this as a comment instead of answer.