Cannot mount sda2: "Extended partition"

[mcsmithSOP]

Why does the FLR appliance display the message: Cannot mount sda2: "Extended partition" when doing a file level restore? These are Debian OSes.

It doesn't affect the ability to restore, but I know my boss is going to ask why.

fdisk output:

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root@testlinux:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 16 GiB, 17179869184 bytes, 33554432 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x31500e44

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *        2048 11780095 11778048  5.6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       11782142 33552383 21770242 10.4G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       11782144 17639423  5857280  2.8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       17641472 19732479  2091008 1021M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7       19734528 20512767   778240  380M 83 Linux
/dev/sda8       20514816 33552383 13037568  6.2G 83 Linux

df output:

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root@testlinux:~# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       5.5G  1.1G  4.1G  21% /
udev             10M     0   10M   0% /dev
tmpfs           101M  4.5M   96M   5% /run
tmpfs           251M     0  251M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           251M     0  251M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda5       2.7G  226M  2.4G   9% /var
/dev/sda7       360M  3.2M  334M   1% /tmp
/dev/sda8       6.0G   14M  5.7G   1% /home

[Gostev]

Hi, Jason. Please also include support case ID for this issue, as requested when you click New Topic - as we need access to debug logs as well. Thanks!

[PTide]

Hi Jason,

You cannot mount your extended partition because in fact it's not a partition at all, but a container for your logical partitions (which are sda5, sda7, sda8, I guess).

You can see that your sda5 starts almost at the same point as sda2 (okay, there is a 2 sectors offset, who cares):

/dev/sda2 11782142 33552383 21770242 10.4G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 11782144 17639423 5857280 2.8G 83 Linux

In such way Linux reserves the space for its logical partitions so they are not getting overwritten by an accident.

In other words - it's totally okay that sda2 was not mounted.

I would worry if somehow it was =)

Thank you.

[mcsmithSOP]

Thanks PTide, but I guess I wasn't entirely clear. I understand why the FLR can't mount sda2 (and therefore why restores work fine); I was curious why the FLR was telling me it couldn't, since my expectation would be that message would be suppressed. (Which is why I didn't open a support ticket because it's not really an issue.)

[PTide]

Oh, got you wrong, sorry about that...I agree - it could have been suppressed.

[mcsmithSOP]

No worries.

Normally I wouldn't even bother about something like that, but we are finishing up our evaluation of Veeam (quitting BE). Our most critical server is a Linux box and my boss is really uptight about backups on it, so anything that indicates it isn't 100% okay stresses him out.

[Gostev]

(Which is why I didn't open a support ticket because it's not really an issue.)

Well, it is most certainly an issue (looks like a bug to me if we attempt to mount what is not a valid partition). However, without a single support case open it will be very challenging for us to move this forward to the resolution...

[mcsmithSOP]

Well, it is most certainly an issue (looks like a bug to me if we attempt to mount what is not a valid partition). However, without a single support case open it will be very challenging for us to move this forward to the resolution...

Opened case # 00965246

[Gostev]

Great, thank you!

[mcsmithSOP]

Received this response from support:

Due to the nature of how we back up, meaning image of VM, when we bring up in FLR appliance, we will present all that disks and its partitions that were backed up. Even if we decided to restore just the disk. we will still bring up all it's partitions. Now I can suggest you enter our forums and submit an feature request.

But at this time that is how our software is designed to run.

To be honest, it's not that big of a deal (to me) to bother putting in a feature request because I am sure there are many other more important things for the team to work on.

[Gostev]

No worries, this topic = feature request

We are already discussing this issue with the devs and if it's possible to adjust the appliance not to mount this type of partitions at all (or at least if we could enhance error handling in the UI). Any support issue that is easy to fix, we try to address without looking back at other factors. Only when something appears hard to fix or change, then we will start also considering priority and importance.

Thanks again for reporting.