With this post, I want to describe how you can mount partitions, nested within LVM volumes. A possible use-case includes file based backup of virtual machines running on LVM volumes.

In the example below, I use a Windows Server 2008 system partition (NTFS). The Windows server is running on a Debian KVM system.

You will need:

• kpartx
• (In this exampe also ntfs-3g)

Lets get started – first some information about the LVM setup:

root@SERVER:/# lvdisplay
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                /dev/lvm/windoze2k8
  VG Name                lvm
  LV UUID                836UYu-lmuT-qCUg-2lRx-QNgZ-COf7-h6NUH6
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                19.53 GiB
  Current LE             5000
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           254:1

The partition table of our LVM volume:

root@SERVER:/# fdisk -l /dev/lvm/windoze2k8

Disk /dev/lvm/windoze2k8: 21.0 GB, 20971520000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2549 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1a13ce21

                       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/lvm/windoze2k81   *           1        2550    20477952    7  HPFS/NTFS

Now, lets move on to the the actual doing:

root@SERVER:~# kpartx -a /dev/lvm/windoze2k8
root@SERVER:~# mkdir /mnt/lvm-windoze2k81 && mount /dev/mapper/lvm-windoze2k81 /mnt/lvm-windoze2k81

Et voila:

root@SERVER:~# ls /mnt/lvm-windoze2k81
autoexec.bat  bootmgr       config.sys              hiberfil.sys  PerfLogs     Program Files  System Volume Information  Windows
Boot          BOOTSECT.BAK  Documents and Settings  pagefile.sys  ProgramData  $RECYCLE.BIN   Users

To remove the mapping, do the following:

root@SERVER:/# umount /mnt/lvm-windoze2k81
root@SERVER:/# kpartx -d /dev/lvm/windoze2k8

Note
If you want to use such a setup to do file based backup of running virtual machines, it is wise to create a LVM snapshot first and applying kpartx on the snapshot device.