All the machines have an LVM configuration. Generally it's a "debian-vg" volume group on "/dev/vda" for the operating system, which has been configured automatically by the installer, and a "vgdata" volume group on "/dev/vdb" for everything else. All file systems are simple ext4, so nothing fancy. (*)
A couple of days ago, one of the virtual machines didn't come up after a routine reboot and dumped me into a maintenance shell. It complained that it couldn't mount filesystems that were on "vgdata". First I tried simply rebooting the machine, but it kept dumping me into maintenance. Investigating a bit deeper, I noticed that "vgdata" and the block device "/dev/vdb" were detected but the volume group was inactive, and none of the logical volumes were found. I ran "vgchange -a y vgdata" and that brought it back online, and I was able to see and mount the logical volumes. After several test reboots, the problem didn't reoccur, so it seemed to be fixed permanently.
I was willing to write it off as a glitch, but then a day later I rebooted one of the *other* virtual machines, and it also dumped me into maintenance with the same error on its own "vgdata". Again, running "vgchange -y vgdata" fixed the problem. I think two times in two days the same error with different virtual machines is not a coincidence, so something is going on here, but I can't figure out what.
I looked at the host logs, but I didn't find anything suspicious that could indicate a hardware error for example. I should also mention that the virtual disks of both machines live on entirely different physical disks: VM1 is on an HDD and VM2 on an SSD.
I also checked if these VMs had been running kernel 6.1.64-1 with the recent ext4 corruption bug at any point, but this does not appear to be the case.
Below is an excerpt of the systemd journal on the failed boot of the second VM, with what I think are the relevant parts. Full pastebin of the log can be found here
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Dec 16 14:40:35 omega lvm[307]: PV /dev/vdb online, VG vgdata is complete.
Dec 16 14:40:35 omega lvm[307]: VG vgdata finished
...
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: dev-vgdata-lvbinaries.device: Job dev-vgdata-lvbinaries.device/start timed out.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-vgdata-lvbinaries.device - /dev/vgdata/lvbinaries.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: Dependency failed for binaries.mount - /binaries.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: Dependency failed for local-fs.target - Local File Systems.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: local-fs.target: Job local-fs.target/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: local-fs.target: Triggering OnFailure= dependencies.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: binaries.mount: Job binaries.mount/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: dev-vgdata-lvbinaries.device: Job dev-vgdata-lvbinaries.device/start failed with result 'timeout'.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: dev-vgdata-lvdata.device: Job dev-vgdata-lvdata.device/start timed out.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-vgdata-lvdata.device - /dev/vgdata/lvdata.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: Dependency failed for data.mount - /data.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: data.mount: Job data.mount/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Dec 16 14:42:05 omega systemd[1]: dev-vgdata-lvdata.device: Job dev-vgdata-lvdata.device/start failed with result 'timeout'.
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# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
vda 254:0 0 20G 0 disk
├─vda1 254:1 0 487M 0 part /boot
├─vda2 254:2 0 1K 0 part
└─vda5 254:5 0 19.5G 0 part
├─debian--vg-root 253:2 0 18.6G 0 lvm /
└─debian--vg-swap_1 253:3 0 980M 0 lvm [SWAP]
vdb 254:16 0 50G 0 disk
├─vgdata-lvbinaries 253:0 0 20G 0 lvm /binaries
└─vgdata-lvdata 253:1 0 30G 0 lvm /data
# vgs
VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree
debian-vg 1 2 0 wz--n- <19.52g 0
vgdata 1 2 0 wz--n- <50.00g 0
# pvs
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/vda5 debian-vg lvm2 a-- <19.52g 0
/dev/vdb vgdata lvm2 a-- <50.00g 0
# lvs
LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
root debian-vg -wi-ao---- 18.56g
swap_1 debian-vg -wi-ao---- 980.00m
lvbinaries vgdata -wi-ao---- 20.00g
lvdata vgdata -wi-ao---- <30.00g