[gentoo-user] Upgrading without breaking LVM

[Matt Harrison]

Hi all,

Some of you may remember my problems with lvm after an update in 
http://www.archivum.info/gentoo-user@l.g.o/2008-04/msg00899.html

I'm now headed back towards the same situation. I have a load of updates to do
according to emerge -DNavu world but I've had to mask all upgraded versions of
udev, mdadm and lvm as every time I upgrade them, it breaks my disk access.

Whenever I upgrade these packages (I'm not which one of those 3 is actually to
blame, and I don't want to chance it) I can no longer access the lvm volumes on
my disks. I have no idea what is causing it.

This means I cannot do a world update as those manually masked packages are
blocking a lot of other packages. 

A few months on, is anyone able to shed light on why updating any of those 3
packages causes my system to be unbootable and my data to be inaccessible?

I would really like to keep my system up to date, but as you can understand, I'm
loathe to make changes that will give me a borked system yet again.

Grateful for advice anyone can give as my system is now getting quite out of
date.

Thanks

Matt Harrison