Removing a PV from a VG that hasn't been used

Applications Filesystems, Disks and Memory
1

Hi all,

So, I have the following setup:

  • Ubuntu 12,04
  • 1 6TB physical volume (the one with data) [ext4]
  • 1 13TB PV (no data... I think?) [ext4]

Here is the story...

  • I created an ext4 on the 13TB PV, added the 13TB to the VG to make a 13TB volume group.
  • Everything went fine and then I ran:
resize2fs /dev/volgroup/volume

And to my surprise.. I couldn't resize past 16TB ! (crap! should have checked this first!).

So, nothing happened.. Now what I want to do is remove the 13TB PV from the VG and do something else with it... but I get the following error:

sudo vgreduce -t home_volume_group /dev/sdc1
  Test mode: Metadata will NOT be updated.
  Physical volume "/dev/sdc1" still in use

How can I safely remove this PV from the VG?

Thanks a bunch!

Harold

2

Have you tried an lvremove to remove it?

3

No I haven't.

Excuse my ignorance... but would that do anything to the data on the logical volume? I want to keep the data on the first PV.

Are you saying i could just remove the logical volume and then recreate another one later without loss of data?

Thanks

4

Since you already expanded the logical volume, the extents are already being used by that LVOL.
You can check that with lvdisplay -m <lvol in question> .

After resize2fs, did the mentioned filesystem increased in size (even partial?)

If yes, you will need to put the new disk inside, and use pvmove to move the extents from that disk to new one.

After that you can use vgreduce.

Can you please post the output of
lvdisplay -m LVOL
vgdisplay -v VOLUMEGROUP

Also df output would be useful.