[linux-lvm] Removing vg and lv after physical drive has been removed

[Keith Keller]

On 2012-09-01, Rene C. <openvz at dokbua.com> wrote:
> We had a disk fail in a server and replaced it before removing the
> drive from LVM.
>
> The server has 4 physical drives (PV's), each with it's own volume
> group (VG). Each VG has 2 or more logical volumes (LV's.) Now LVM is
> complaining about the missing drive. So we have a VG (vg04) with two
> LV's that have become orphans than we need to clear out of the system.
>
> The problem is every time we run any LVM command we get some 'read
> failed' errors. I've tried different commands to try to clear it out
> but so far without luck:

[snip]

> The missing VG and LV's are not important, we just want to remove them.

I believe that you can use dmsetup to remove the vestiges of old unused
LVs and VGs.  Of course you *must* be careful that you don't
fumblefingers the command.  ;-)  I don't recall the exact syntax, so
check out man dmsetup, and if you have questions, hope that someone with
more experience can reply.  (I did this safely many months ago, but I do
not recall the exact syntax I used.)

--keith


-- 
kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us