LVM - DeConfigure LVM Disks W/O VgImporting First

[Alzhy]

VxVM is unable to initialize a couple disks because it detects it used to be (or still is) under LVM control.. This is a new install of HPUX that I am doing and would like to configure those disks into Veritas VM... Vgimporting, lvremoving, pvremoving and finally vgremoving does the trick..

Is there a quick way to wipe out LVM configs on disks without going through the gyrations of VGimporting them first....

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Nelson:

# pvremove pv_path

...is the command you are seeking.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Because the LVM data structures are on the few few sectors of the disks, nothing more complicated than a dd should be needed.

e.g.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c1t6d0 bs=1024k count=16

That ought to do it. Of course, substitute the appropriate raw disk device node for you disk(s).

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Because the LVM data structures are on the few few sectors of the disks, nothing more complicated than a dd should be needed.

e.g.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c1t6d0 bs=1024k count=16

That ought to do it. Of course, substitute the appropriate raw disk device node for your disk(s).

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Nelson:

Please note that the command I cited is 'pvremove' as in "remove". It is not a typographical error for 'pvcreate'!!! see the man pages for 'pvremove'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Alzhy]

Thanks A. Clay,

That was what I was thinking as well and wanted to be sure first and how far should I go "NULLing" the header/private region area of the disk... I was hoping there would be a "-f" (force) argument to pvremove...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Nelson:

I suggest you read my posts, too. Including:

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90692/B2355-90692.html

...JRF...

[Alzhy]

James,

Thanks.. I was aware already of pvremove as well as the families of commands relating to LVM (vg???, lv??? and pv???) -- it's just that this is a fresh install of HPUX11i and the disks I'd like to use in VxVM formerly belonged to a LVM VG.. pvremove does not allow me to remove its LVM properties without importing it first and going thought the procedures for wiping out the entire VG... A. Clay's approach would seem to work for all intents and purposes..

[Sunil Sharma_1]

hi,

did you tried to initialise disks using vxdisksetup -i option.
or vxdisk init
It should work.

Sunil

[Alzhy]

Sunil,

No amount of vxdisksetp or vxdisk inits will initialize a disk that was previously used by LVM. VxVM strictly avoids conflicts with whatever other VM's there may be in a system..