vgcreate failed

[Ulrich Deiters]

I tried to connect a fresh 36.5 GB disk as a new volume group.
Vgcreate returns an error message: Could not create volume
group ... file too large.
What is going wrong?

[Eddie Warren]

Professor,

It could be as you were trying to create your volume group you did not extend your "max_pe" size. The default is 1016 @ 4mb per physical extent. You can extend it up to 65535 by using the "-e" option on your vgcreate.

I hope this helps.

Eddie

[Darrel Louis]

You need to specify the following when creating the VG.
vgcreate -e (maximum number of physical extents) -l (maximum number of logical volumes) -p (aximum number of physical volumes) -s (size in megabytes of physical extent) /dev/vg## /dev/dsk/c#t#d#

check man vgcreate.
1 to 65535 Max PE
1 to 255 Max LV
1 to 255 Max PV

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

When you crerate your volume group with vgcreate use the -e option and specifiy 8681
when times by 4 gives you 36 meg , default is 1016.

[Ulrich Deiters]

Sorry, but the problem persists. Vgcreate automatically adjusts
the number of physical extents (to 8750 in my case). But even
if I override that with "-e 9000", the message "file too large"
is returned.

???

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Check this link for more information:

http://us-support3.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=57dc7ab21c0b25cebe/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000047771452

I had this problem when I tried to create a VG (when I was rebuilding a system from an ignite tape) on an 18GB drive. What I did to solve the problem was change the PE Size to 8 MB (the default is 4 MB). That solved the problem and let the vgcreate go through.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

From document #KBRC00000716:

Since the LVM data structures must fit into a single extent on the disk, the file too large error occurs when the extent size is smaller than the LVM data structures.

As disks continue to increase in size, there is not enough room in the header files to create a table large enough to track all the physical extents.

Reduce the size of the LVM data structure by reducing the maximum number of logical volumes the volume group can contain (max_lv), the maximum number of physical volumes the volume group can contain (max_pv), the size of the physical extents (pe_size), or any combination thereof.

vgcreate -l (number of max logical volumes) -p (number of max physical volumes) -s (size in megabytes of physical extent) /dev/vg## /dev/dsk/c#t#d#

By default, these parameters are set to:

max_lv 255
max_pv 16
pe_size 4MB

...regards!...

...JRF...

[Jason Moorhead_2]

I am having this same problem trying to introduce an XP512 into my volume group. It looks like any reduction in the variables (max-pv, max-lv, etc) will allow the command to work. It's difficult in my case because I need to allocate 4TB (almost 200 disks) so my command is:
vgcreate -e 65535 -l 255 -p 255 -s 64 ...

this gives the error File to large. May need to up the extent size and lower the max-extents. Just a thought.

Jason Moorhead