pvdisplay and vgdisplay

[Feljav]

What is the meaning of this information in the output in the pvdisplay?

VGDA 2
Stale PE 0
Autoswitch On

[Patrick Wallek]

# man pvdisplay

should provide the information you need.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

See the manpages for 'pvdisplay' and 'vgdisplay'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sandman!]

# man pvdisplay
and
# man pvchange

should give you all the information you need.

[skt_skt]

Abstract

The results when performing an immediate path switch using 'pvchange -s' while autoswitchback is enabled, can seem
unpredictable. When manually switching paths, autoswitchback should be disabled.

Background

LVM provides multipathing support for multiported devices. LVM's multipath support uses only one active path where the other path(s) are on standby. When the current path becomes unavailable, LVM will switch to the first available standby path. The paths are selected in the order they were configured.
The pvchange command provides several options for managing LVM behavior with paths:
"The -s (lower case s) option (immediate switch) requests that the specified path be used for all future I/O.
"The -S (upper case s) option (autoswitchback) when set (default value), tells LVM to automatically switch to the
best available path. When autoswitchback is disabled, LVM will still switch paths when the current path becomes unavailable, but it will not switch back to a higher priority
path that returns. The pvdisplay command will show the current autoswitchback setting.

Make note that the best available path is determined based on the order the paths were configured into the volume group (using vgcreate, vgextend, vgimport or vgscan). The order can be determined by using vgdisplay or pvdisplay and changed using vgreduce and vgextend.

When performing an immediate link switch (using pvchange -s), LVM's behavior will vary depending upon the autoswitchback (-S)
setting.
"When autoswitchback (-S) is disabled, LVM will switch paths as directed by pvchange -s (immediate switch) and continue to use this path until it becomes unavailable or another manual switch is performed.
"When autoswitchback (-S) is enabled, LVM will switch to the selected path as directed by pvchange -s. However to comply with the autoswitchback setting, LVM will switch back to the best available path.

Conclusion

If you want to manually select a path using pvchange -s, autoswitchback should be disabled first


stale is related to the mirrorring in the LV.

man vgdisplay for VGDA