From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Heinz J . Mauelshagen" Subject: Re: [linux-lvm] pvcreate problem Message-ID: <20021206155120.A8137@sistina.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: ; from alazarev@hera.itg.uiuc.edu on Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 05:27:01PM -0600 Sender: linux-lvm-admin@sistina.com Errors-To: linux-lvm-admin@sistina.com Reply-To: linux-lvm@sistina.com List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Date: Fri Dec 6 08:59:02 2002 List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-lvm@sistina.com On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 05:27:01PM -0600, Alexander Lazarevich wrote: > i just installed a fresh RH linux 7.3, with LVM 1, or whatever comes in > the RH distribution. > > ihe first thing i'm trying to do is pvcreate on my big RAID 5 array, which > is /dev/sdb: > > [root@discord root]# pvcreate /dev/sdb > pvcreate -- ERROR: can't initialize physical volume "/dev/sdb" of volume > group "homevg" without -ff > > but there is no volume group homevg: > > [root@discord root]# vgdisplay homevg > vgdisplay -- volume group "homevg" not found > > i am able to fdisk a partition onto /dev/sdb, and then do a pvcreate on > that partition, but i want to do a pvcreate on the whole free volume, no > partitions! i may have made a typo before, by trying to do a pvcreate > /dev/sdb, i instead did a vgcreate /dev/sdb. and them i might have tried > some other crap cause it was freeking out. i rebooted so i can see the > history, unless lvm keeps some kind of log file? i couldnt find one. No log file ITR. In general having at least one partition per device is a good idea, because sources like /proc/partitions or tools like fdisk find that there's something on the device. You loose _very_ little capacity that way. If you still want to use /dev/sdv directly "pvcreate -ff /dev/sdb;vgcreate ..." should do it after you remove any partition table from /dev/sdb again. Eventually you need a "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1" _after_ you removed the partition table. > > i rebooted, etc. id prefer not to have to reinstall everything. how do i > fix this problem? > > any ideas? > > thanks in advance! > > alex > --- --- > Alex Lazarevich | Systems | Imaging Technology Group > alazarev@itg.uiuc.edu | (217)244-1565 | www.itg.uiuc.edu > --- --- > > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-lvm mailing list > linux-lvm@sistina.com > http://lists.sistina.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm > read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/ -- Regards, Heinz -- The LVM Guy -- *** Software bugs are stupid. Nevertheless it needs not so stupid people to solve them *** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Heinz Mauelshagen Sistina Software Inc. Senior Consultant/Developer Am Sonnenhang 11 56242 Marienrachdorf Germany Mauelshagen@Sistina.com +49 2626 141200 FAX 924446 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-