Re-create volume group fails

[Simon Wickham_6]

Dear All,

We experienced an issue the other day which required a replacement disk I am unable to do a vgcfgrestore so I need to recreate the lvol's with a newfs and restore from backup.

This has caused issue's so I removed the volume group and carried out the following :

mv /etc/lvmtab /etc/lvmtab.save
vgscan -av

Which I no longer see vg02 and also have chaecked there is no vg02 but when I issue a vgcreate /dev/vg02 /dev/dsk/c0t10d0 i get the following error message :

Increased the number of physical extents per physical volume to 1023.
vgcreate: Volume group "/dev/vg02" could not be created:
A volume group is already using this major and minor number.
Please check the minor number of the "group" device file.

Steps taken :
-------------
1. mkdir -p /dev/vg02
2. pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c0t10d0
3. mknod /dev/vg02/group c 64 0x020000
4. vgcreate /dev/vg02 /dev/dsk/c0t10d0

Can any one please advise.

Regards,
Simon

[Luk Vandenbussche · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon

Check is the major and minor number are not in use by another vg yet

ls -l /dev/vg*/group | grep 0x020000

If it use another major / minor number for you vg

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Simon:

Do:

# ls -l /dev/vg*/group. I think you will find another volume group using the minor number 0x020000. Remember that the minor number does not have to match the volume group numbers --- I could have vg03 with with a group device file of 0x020000 (although I don't do this!).

Regards!

...JRF...

[Simon Wickham_6]

Hi,

Thanks for the help the next number available is 0x050000 so if i use this instead of 0x020000 for vg02 will be fine as I am unable to remove it.

I know the default limit is 10 volume groups as set by the kernel.

Am I correct.

Thanks,
Simon

[Simon Wickham_6]

Hi James,

That has just answered my question I sent as yours came in.

Regards,
Simon

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi SImon:

Yes, the default 'maxvgs' is ten (10) [0x0a0000], and yes, you can use a minor number of 0x050000 with a volume group name of "vg05" per my first comments.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Simon Wickham_6]

Thanks for the help.

Simon