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I have just added a new NVME drive to my system, I want to use it as my primary boot drive and I wanted to take the opportunity to do a cleanup of my OS.

To do that I installed a clean copy of Ubuntu 20.04 on the NVME drive with LVM and LUKS encryption. The new OS boots up fine, but now I want to copy my files over from my other drive; which was also an encrypted ssd with Ubuntu 20.04 installed.

My problem is that both drives are picked up with the same LV Path; /dev/vgubuntu/root and the same VG Name vgubuntu. I know that I could use sudo vgrename aaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaa old-ubuntu to change the VG name of the old volume and access it, but ideally I'd like to be able to boot to both until I'm happy with the setup on the new drive.

Reading other related questions suggests that if I rename the old volume with vgrename then I won't be able to boot into it.

Running sudo lvdisplay outputs this (trimmed) and you can see that the new system root and swap are available while the old system is unavailable:

  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgubuntu/root
  LV Name                root
  VG Name                vgubuntu
  LV UUID                aaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaa  
  LV Status              NOT available
  ...
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgubuntu/swap_1
  LV Name                swap_1
  VG Name                vgubuntu
  LV UUID                bbbbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbbbb
  LV Status              NOT available
  ...
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgubuntu/root
  LV Name                root
  VG Name                vgubuntu
  LV UUID                cccccc-cccc-cccc-cccc-cccc-cccc-cccccc
  LV Status              available
  ...
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgubuntu/swap_1
  LV Name                swap_1
  VG Name                vgubuntu
  LV UUID                dddddd-dddd-dddd-dddd-dddd-dddd-dddddd
  LV Status              available
  ...

On other distros this answer might work. But unfortunately /dev/SysVolGroup doesn't exist on Ubuntu 20.04.

How can I mount my old LUKS encrypted volume on Ubuntu without making it unbootable?

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  • How about renaming, doing what you want to do and renaming back to the original name?
    – Bruni
    Apr 8, 2021 at 6:45
  • I saw that answer but unfortunately /dev/SysVolGroup doesn't exist in Ubuntu 20.04 and the other option listed is renaming. I wasn't sure that after a rename I could just rename it back to make it bootable. Ironically when I tried to boot back into the old disk I couldn't, even without renaming. When I tried I just got dumped to the grub shell, so in the end I did rename the disk and now have to hurriedly set my system to get some work done. Apr 8, 2021 at 9:12
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    did you try all the answers?
    – Zanna
    Apr 27, 2021 at 7:53
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    @Zanna There are 3 answers, 2 are duplicates that involve renaming the volume using vgrename; if you do that then you can't boot into the volume, which I did specify in the question was my goal. The other solution, using /dev/SysVolGroup, doesn't work in Ubuntu 20.04 (or later I assume). Apr 27, 2021 at 14:24
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    Thanks - just checking as you only referred to one of the answers when you edited :)
    – Zanna
    Apr 27, 2021 at 16:52

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