lvm taking control of disk that veritas should control

[Shawn Miller_2]

I have an Itanium server that is using veritas to manage all the disks, disk groups, and file systems.
Often when I add disks to the system LVM will take over control. I need help with advise in how to make sure this does not keep happening and how to get the disk under veritas control.

If you run a vxdisk list it will show the device and that LVM controls it. I have issued no LVM commands for this disk. I did run an ioscan -fnCdisk, I also ran an insf -e.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

[Steven E. Protter]

LVM doesn't just grab disks. It has to be told to do so.

When you add a disk to your system it is picked up by ioscan. Then it requires a manual or scripted process to vgextend a volume group to include that disk.

Now, if you add a disk to a system and its already associated with a volume group, then that explains the behavior.

strings /etc/lvmtab

If the disk is associated with a volume group it will be listed there.

Its possible you have a script doing this run by cron. Thats a custom job and you need to look for scripts with the lvextend command.

SEP

[Shawn Miller_2]

More info:
It is possible but unlikely that the disk that were added used to be on a server that used lvm.
There is nothing in /etc/lvmtab.
I have no cronjobs on this server.
I did run vxdctl after I ran insf -e and that is when vxdisk list would show the disk under lvm. vxdg command also errors out saying disk is already in use with LVM.

[Kent Ostby]

Shawn ... if they were used on another system using LVM then they may still have the LVM headers on the front of the disk.

VERY CAREFULLY TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE DOING THIS TO THE CORRECT DISK, YOU CAN DO :

dd if=/etc/passwd of=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ

(note, you can use any file. I just tend to use /etc/passwd for stuff like this because its "big enough" to make a difference but not super huge).

AGAIN, BE CAREFUL THAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE CORRECT DISK BEFORE YOU OVERWRITE IT.

Best regards,

Oz

[Geoff Wild]

You may have to initialize the disk.

You could try pvcreate -f, then use vxdiskadd...

Rgds...Geoff

[Shawn Miller_2]

Kent I think we heading in the right direction on this but I get an i/o error when I try that.

[Shawn Miller_2]

I have solved the problem. The disk had to have been a disk that was once in use by another system using LVM.

1. run pvcreate -f disk
2. pvremove disk

Then the all the veritas commands work fine.