pvdisplay does not show the correct PV size with large PVs

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

Situation

When creating a large PV, pvdisplay shows a wrong value for PV Size.

Resolution

This issue is solved with an update to lvm2 (lvm2-2.02.17-7.18), which is available maintenance update.

The metadata written to disk by the original lvcreate is wrong though, the metadata is not fixed by this update. Thus this has to be done manually. There are 2 different ways to fix the metadata:

The first way is to delete and recreate the VG (all data will be lost!):

# vgremove VG-NAME
# vgcreate /dev/device VG-NAME
The second way is to backup, modify and restore the VG configuration manually:

# vgcfgbackup -f /tmp/vgbackup VG-NAME

This command will backup the VG-configuration to the file /tmp/vgbackup

# grep dev_size /etc/lvm/archive/VG-NAME_00000.vg

This command will output the value from the inital creation of the VG, which is the correct value. The wrong value will be written to the VG config when the LV is created, so the file VG-NAME_00000.vg contains the correct value.

# edit /tmp/vgbackup

Now the file written by vgcfgbackup needs to be modified to contain the correct value from the last step. Replace the line containing"dev_size" by the line from the "grep" command above.

# vgcfgrestore -f /tmp/vgbackup VG-NAME

This will restore the modified VG configuration. From now on, the metadata in the LVM configuration is correct.

Disclaimer

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