Recover incus containers

Incus
1

I’m trying to recover from a system crash and recover the incus LVM storage. I’ve installed Zabby Incus. I’m trying to follow the recovery tutorial ( How to recover or reconnect an Incus storage pool – Mi blog lah! ) but I’m having trouble translating from zfs to lvm.The VGname is lxd-pool. When I run “incus admin recover” I get the following:

# incus admin recover
This server currently has the following storage pools:
Would you like to recover another storage pool? (yes/no) [default=no]: yes
Name of the storage pool: lxd-pool
Name of the storage backend (btrfs, dir, lvm, truenas): lvm
Source of the storage pool (block device, volume group, dataset, path, … as applicable): /dev/lxd-pool
Additional storage pool configuration property (KEY=VALUE, empty when done):
Would you like to recover another storage pool? (yes/no) [default=no]:
The recovery process will be scanning the following storage pools:
NEW: “lxd-pool” (backend=“lvm”, source=“/dev/lxd-pool”)
Would you like to continue with scanning for lost volumes? (yes/no) [default=yes]:no
Scanning for unknown volumes…Error: Failed validation request: Failed mounting pool “lxd-pool”: Cannot mount pool as “lvm.vg_name” is not specified

One problem is that I don’t know what to specify for the source of the storage pool. /dev/lxd-pool doesn’t exist. If I specify /dev/nvme0n1p3, where the LVM pv is located I get the ame error message.

2

That should be the VG name though the error you’re getting makes me think that we may be missing some LVM specific logic in there.

3

I’ve tried Source = lxd-pool and I get the same error.

I noticed that the LVname is LXDThinPool, not lxd-pool. Using that doesn’t make any difference.

4

Is there a way to mount a container’s LV?

5

Can you file an issue at Sign in to GitHub · GitHub?

As for mounting a container’s LV, you should be able to do it with lvchange -ay -ky VG/LV and then mount the entry from under /dev/VG/LV.

6

Created “Incus admin recover fails for LVM storage #2823” Incus admin recover fails for LVM storage · Issue #2823 · lxc/incus · GitHub

The “lvchange” command doesn’t appear to work:

#lvchange -ay -ky lxd-pool/containers_fedora37

Logical volume lxd-pool/containers_fedora37 changed.
WARNING: Combining activation change with other commands is not advised.

#ls /dev/lxd-pool

ls: cannot access ‘/dev/lxd-pool’: No such file or directory

lvdisplay doesn’t show any change in the LV.

(Splitting the lvchange into two commands to address the warning doesn’t make any difference.)

7

Try lvchange -ay --ignoreactivationskip VG/LV

8

Thanks. That worked.

Can I tar the directory and use it with “incus import”?

9

Possibly. I think you’ll need to manually add in an index.yaml though as that’s something that’s in backups which isn’t in the instance folder.

10

I’ll give it a try. What’s in index.yaml? Can you give me an example?

11 
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus create images:alpine/edge a1
Creating a1
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus export a1
Backup exported successfully!         
stgraber@castiana:~$ mkdir a1
stgraber@castiana:~$ cd a1
stgraber@castiana:~/a1$ tar zxf ../a1.tar.gz 
stgraber@castiana:~/a1$ cat backup/index.yaml 
name: a1
backend: zfs
pool: default
optimized: false
optimized_header: false
type: container
config:
  container:
    architecture: x86_64
    config:
      image.architecture: amd64
      image.description: Alpine edge amd64 (20260115_13:00)
      image.os: Alpine
      image.release: edge
      image.requirements.secureboot: "false"
      image.serial: "20260115_13:00"
      image.type: squashfs
      image.variant: default
      volatile.apply_template: create
      volatile.base_image: 08f4fdb05bbc429d0dc6a5c4f4b14b190f328349b4ccd8adb1138cd437e6ab1e
      volatile.cloud-init.instance-id: da6d2777-bdb4-4a2f-805f-4516fff65768
      volatile.eth0.hwaddr: 10:66:6a:0e:52:19
      volatile.idmap.base: "0"
      volatile.idmap.next: '[{"Isuid":true,"Isgid":false,"Hostid":1000000,"Nsid":0,"Maprange":1000000000},{"Isuid":false,"Isgid":true,"Hostid":1000000,"Nsid":0,"Maprange":1000000000}]'
      volatile.last_state.idmap: '[]'
      volatile.uuid: a6dc12b5-36a7-44de-b8ea-6f3d1cde6bea
      volatile.uuid.generation: a6dc12b5-36a7-44de-b8ea-6f3d1cde6bea
    devices: {}
    ephemeral: false
    profiles:
    - default
    stateful: false
    description: ""
    created_at: 2026-01-15T20:48:25.742689264Z
    expanded_config:
      image.architecture: amd64
      image.description: Alpine edge amd64 (20260115_13:00)
      image.os: Alpine
      image.release: edge
      image.requirements.secureboot: "false"
      image.serial: "20260115_13:00"
      image.type: squashfs
      image.variant: default
      volatile.apply_template: create
      volatile.base_image: 08f4fdb05bbc429d0dc6a5c4f4b14b190f328349b4ccd8adb1138cd437e6ab1e
      volatile.cloud-init.instance-id: da6d2777-bdb4-4a2f-805f-4516fff65768
      volatile.eth0.hwaddr: 10:66:6a:0e:52:19
      volatile.idmap.base: "0"
      volatile.idmap.next: '[{"Isuid":true,"Isgid":false,"Hostid":1000000,"Nsid":0,"Maprange":1000000000},{"Isuid":false,"Isgid":true,"Hostid":1000000,"Nsid":0,"Maprange":1000000000}]'
      volatile.last_state.idmap: '[]'
      volatile.uuid: a6dc12b5-36a7-44de-b8ea-6f3d1cde6bea
      volatile.uuid.generation: a6dc12b5-36a7-44de-b8ea-6f3d1cde6bea
    expanded_devices:
      eth0:
        name: eth0
        network: incusbr0
        type: nic
      root:
        path: /
        pool: default
        type: disk
    name: a1
    status: Stopped
    status_code: 102
    last_used_at: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
    location: none
    type: container
    project: default
  pool:
    config:
      source: castiana/incus
      volatile.initial_source: castiana/incus
      zfs.pool_name: castiana/incus
    description: ""
    name: default
    driver: zfs
    used_by: []
    status: Created
    locations:
    - none
  profiles:
  - config: {}
    description: Default Incus profile
    devices:
      eth0:
        name: eth0
        network: incusbr0
        type: nic
      root:
        path: /
        pool: default
        type: disk
    name: default
    used_by: []
    project: default
  volume:
    config: {}
    description: ""
    name: a1
    type: container
    used_by: []
    location: none
    content_type: filesystem
    project: default
    created_at: 2026-01-15T20:48:25.742689264Z
stgraber@castiana:~/a1$