[linux-lvm] Proper way to delete an active snapshot?

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2011, Linda A. Walsh wrote:

> If you have a snapshot of a volume running... how are you supposed to delete
> it?
>
> i.e. after you unmount it... if I just do a lvremove, I get a warning about 
> it being
> an active volume -- so I tried doing a dmsetup remove on it first -- and that
> stops the warning -- but I just noticed, I had a bunch of inactive 'cow'
> volume names under 'dmsetup ls', that referred to the old snapshot names.
>
> so I'm guessing that using dmsetup to remove the dev first, then lvremove is
> NOT the best way to be doing this...(as it results in stuff that needs to be 
> cleaned
> up...)... 
> So how do I remove the volume w/o getting warnings about it being 'active'?

I agree that the warning is broken (when LV is not otherwise mounted or open).

I use

   /usr/sbin/lvremove  -f "$snappath"

in scripts, which suppresses the warning without leaving a mess.  I'm not
sure what happens if the LV is actually open in that case.  Hopefully
you get an error.

I am on Centos-5.6

--
 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
     Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
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