Safe to delete /etc/lvmconf/vg*conf.old files?

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi,

I am a bit tight with disk space in / on this box.
I looked for candidates of files which possibly could be removed and found quite a few lvmconf backup files in /etc/lvmconf which take up considerable amount of space.
I wonder if it was safe to remove those with the .old extensions.
If I look at what vgcfgrestore outputs if applied on those the only difference seems to be in the first line where the deviating name of the backup file with .old suffix appears.

[root@warnow(Z01):/etc/lvmconf]
# vgcfgrestore -l -f vgsapz01.conf.old|sed -n 2,\$p|cksum
1663276796 1135
[root@warnow(Z01):/etc/lvmconf]
# vgcfgrestore -l -f vgsapz01.conf|sed -n 2,\$p|cksum
1663276796 1135

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Ralph,

Why not link /etc/lvmconf to new filesystem inside vg00 (if you have enough space).

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Torsten.]

The *.conf.old files are just a backup of the backup. I think you can remove them if you are sure you won't need them (many changes in the past done?).

You may also save them anywhere else.

Anyway, normally you'll save a couple of kb only (unless you have very large LVM configs).

[Ralph Grothe]

Theoretically I still have sufficient free PEs to create a new LV.

$ /usr/sbin/vgdisplay vg00|grep -e Size -e Free
PE Size (Mbytes) 8
Free PE 844
$ echo $((8*422))
3376


But I thought that contents of /etc/lvmconf needed to be integral part of /dev/vg00/lvol3 (e.g. in maintenance mode)?

[Torsten.]

You should always have *1* backup of the config.

You can also check the contents, for example:

# vgcfgrestore -f /etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf.old -l
Volume Group Configuration information in "/etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf.old"
VG Name /dev/vg00
---- Physical volumes : 1 ----
/dev/rdsk/c0t6d0 (Bootable)

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi Torsten,

haven't done not many LVM changes in the past on this box.
But because there are shared VGs with many SAN PVs only the backup files come close to 22 MB,
which is more than 10% of /.

[root@warnow(Z01):/root]
# ll /etc/lvmconf/*old|awk '$5>0{s+=$5};END{printf"%10.2f\n",s/2^20}'
21.87


I will relocate the /etc/lvmconf/*old files to another filesystem and remove them from here.

Thanks for your help.

[Ralph Grothe]

> You can also check the contents, for example:

see my cksums above.
The outputs only differ in the 1st line with the conf file name (certainly).

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Ralph:

By default every time an LVM modification is made a 'vgcfgbackup' is run. Too, when an Ignite recovery backup is made, 'vgcfgbackup' is run.

If you are short on space, I think you can quite safely remove the ".old" files. After all, if you needed to perform a 'vgcfgrestore' you would be using the most current backup.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi James,

that was it, I hadn't Ignite on the agenda.
Now I know where the backup files originate from.
Thanks for the reminder.