LVM commands tutorial : Part 2 : Volume group (vgremove, vgsync)

Series of tutorial to learn LVM commands. In this part, learn how to remove volume group from system and how to sync stale PE within VG (vgremove, vgsync)

We have seen 10 commands of volume group activities til now under part two. Now we will cover remaining two commands in this post.

Command : vgremove

vgremove commands used to remove volume group from system. But this is destroying command since it requires removal of all LV, PV in VG. It is always recommended to use vgexport instead of vgremove. Since vgexport also removes VG information from system but keeps it untouched on PV so that same PV can be imported to new VG on new/same system using vgimport.

Read :

Safe removal of VG can be done with below steps :

Backup all user data in that VG
Get information of all LV and PV in that VG using vgdisplay -v command
Make sure no LV is in use using fuser -cu /mount_point command

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# fuser -cu /data

/data: 223412c(user1)
Unmount mount points of related LV

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# umount /data

Remove all LVs with lvremove /dev/vg01/lvol-name command

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 # lvremove /dev/vg01/lvol1

The logical volume "/dev/vg01/lvol1" is not empty;

do you really want to delete the logical volume (y/n) : y

Logical volume "/dev/vg01/lvol1" has been successfully removed.

Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg03 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vg01.conf

Remove all PVs in VG except any one with vgreduce /dev/vg01 /dev/disk/diskX command

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#vgreduce /dev/vg01 /dev/disk/disk4

Volume group "/dev/vg01" has been successfully reduced.

Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg01 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vg01.conf

Finally use vgremove command to remove VG from system

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# vgremove /dev/vg01

Volume group "/dev/vg01" has been successfully removed
Remove related group files from system using rm /dev/vg01 command

Command : vgsync

This command used to sync stale LE of LV mirrors in current VG. This used in mirroring only. Once can observe output of vgdisplay -v and confirm if there are any stale LE in current VG. If you found stale LE then you can synchronize them using this command.

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# vgsync /dev/vg01

Resynchronized logical volume "/dev/vg01/lvol01".

Resynchronized logical volume "/dev/vg01/lvol02".

Resynchronized volume group "/dev/vg01".