hp-ux 10.20 Cannot remove disk from logical volume management

[Dieter S. Vener]

Hi All,

I am having an issue with a disk on an HP-UX 10.20 system. Before responding let me clarify that pvremove does not exist on HP-UX 10.20.

When trying to run pvcreate, I get the following:

%pvcreate /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0
pvcreate: The physical volume already belongs to a volume group

This disk was in a volume group at one time, but I believe the admin before me did not remove the volume group cleanly. This disk device is not in my /etc/lvmtab and does not show up in my "vgdisplay -v" output. I have tried all of the following:

%vgcreate -f -s 4 /dev/dsk/c1t1d0
Device busy

%rm /etc/lvmtab
%vgscan -v


%newfs /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0
vxfs mkvs: /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0 is a logical volume device, cannot mkfs

This disk is a member of a 12H RAID5 array. 12/1.x.

I am completely baffled. How can I use this disk again?

Thanks

[Dieter S. Vener]

Nevermind. I figured it out:

%insf -e
%rm /etc/lvmtab
%vgscan -v
%vgchange -a y

%pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0

[DCE]

Dieter,

Did you try pvcreate -f /dev/dsk/c1t1d0?

The -f option forces the creation of a physical volume (thus deleting any file system or volume manager information present)

[Patrick Wallek]

You just need to use 'pvcreate -f' on the disk. That will (f)orce pvcreate to create LVM areas on the disk.