18.3.1 Initializing and Managing Physical Volumes

Before you can create a volume group, you must initialize the physical devices that you want to use as physical volumes with LVM.


If the devices contain any existing data, back up the data.

To set up a physical device as a physical volume, use the pvcreate command:

# pvcreate [options] device ...

For example, set up /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd, and /dev/sde as physical volumes:

# pvcreate -v /dev/sd[bcde]
Set up physical volume for “/dev/sdb” with 6313482 available
Zeroing start of device /dev/sdb
Physical volume “/dev/sdb” successfully created

To display information about physical volumes, you can use the pvdisplay, pvs, and pvscan commands.

To remove a physical volume from the control of LVM, use the pvremove command:

# pvremove device

Other commands that are available for managing physical volumes include pvchange, pvck, pvmove, and pvresize.

For more information, see the lvm(8), pvcreate(8), and other LVM manual pages.