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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | USAGE | OPTIONS | VARIABLES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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VGCHANGE(8) System Manager's Manual VGCHANGE(8)
vgchange — Change volume group attributes
vgchange option_args position_args
[ option_args ]
[ position_args ]
-a|--activate y|n|ay
--activationmode partial|degraded|complete
--addtag Tag
--alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|inherit
--autoactivation String
-A|--autobackup y|n
--commandprofile String
--config String
-d|--debug
--deltag Tag
--detachprofile
--devices PV
--devicesfile String
--driverloaded y|n
-f|--force
-h|--help
-K|--ignoreactivationskip
--ignorelockingfailure
--ignoremonitoring
--journal String
--lockopt String
--lockstart
--lockstop
--locktype sanlock|dlm|none
-l|--logicalvolume Number
--longhelp
-p|--maxphysicalvolumes Number
--metadataprofile String
--monitor y|n
--nohints
--nolocking
--noudevsync
-P|--partial
-s|--physicalextentsize Size[m|UNIT]
--poll y|n
--profile String
--pvmetadatacopies 0|1|2
-q|--quiet
--readonly
--refresh
--reportformat basic|json
-x|--resizeable y|n
-S|--select String
--setautoactivation y|n
--sysinit
--systemid String
-t|--test
-u|--uuid
-v|--verbose
--version
--[vg]metadatacopies all|unmanaged|Number
-y|--yes
vgchange changes VG attributes, changes LV activation in the ker‐
nel, and includes other utilities for VG maintenance.
Change a general VG attribute.
For options listed in parentheses, any one is
required, after which the others are optional.
vgchange
( -l|--logicalvolume Number
-p|--maxphysicalvolumes Number
-u|--uuid
-s|--physicalextentsize Size[m|UNIT]
-x|--resizeable y|n
--addtag Tag
--deltag Tag
--alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|
inherit
--pvmetadatacopies 0|1|2
--[vg]metadatacopies all|unmanaged|Number
--profile String
--detachprofile
--metadataprofile String
--setautoactivation y|n )
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Start or stop monitoring LVs from dmeventd.
vgchange --monitor y|n
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ --sysinit ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Start or stop processing LV conversions.
vgchange --poll y|n
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Activate or deactivate LVs.
vgchange -a|--activate y|n|ay
[ -K|--ignoreactivationskip ]
[ -P|--partial ]
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ --activationmode partial|degraded|complete ]
[ --sysinit ]
[ --readonly ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --autoactivation String ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Reactivate LVs using the latest metadata.
vgchange --refresh
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ --sysinit ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Change the system ID of a VG.
vgchange --systemid String VG
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Start the lockspace of a shared VG in lvmlockd.
vgchange --lockstart
[ -S|--select String ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Stop the lockspace of a shared VG in lvmlockd.
vgchange --lockstop
[ -S|--select String ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ VG|Tag|Select ... ]
—
Change the lock type for a shared VG.
vgchange --locktype sanlock|dlm|none VG
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Common options for lvm:
[ -d|--debug ]
[ -h|--help ]
[ -q|--quiet ]
[ -t|--test ]
[ -v|--verbose ]
[ -y|--yes ]
[ --commandprofile String ]
[ --config String ]
[ --devices PV ]
[ --devicesfile String ]
[ --driverloaded y|n ]
[ --journal String ]
[ --lockopt String ]
[ --longhelp ]
[ --nohints ]
[ --nolocking ]
[ --profile String ]
[ --version ]
-a|--activate y|n|ay
Change the active state of LVs. An active LV can be used
through a block device, allowing data on the LV to be ac‐
cessed. y makes LVs active, or available. n makes LVs in‐
active, or unavailable. The block device for the LV is
added or removed from the system using device-mapper in the
kernel. A symbolic link /dev/VGName/LVName pointing to the
device node is also added/removed. All software and
scripts should access the device through the symbolic link
and present this as the name of the device. The location
and name of the underlying device node may depend on the
distribution, configuration (e.g. udev), or release ver‐
sion. ay specifies autoactivation, which is used by sys‐
tem-generated activation commands. By default, LVs are au‐
toactivated. An autoactivation property can be set on a VG
or LV to disable autoactivation, see --setautoactivation
y|n in vgchange, lvchange, vgcreate, and lvcreate. Display
the property with vgs or lvs "-o autoactivation". The
lvm.conf(5) auto_activation_volume_list includes names of
VGs or LVs that should be autoactivated, and anything not
listed is not autoactivated. When auto_activation_vol‐
ume_list is undefined (the default), it has no effect. If
auto_activation_volume_list is defined and empty, no LVs
are autoactivated. Items included by auto_activation_vol‐
ume_list will not be autoactivated if the autoactivation
property has been disabled. See lvmlockd(8) for more in‐
formation about activation options ey and sy for shared
VGs.
--activationmode partial|degraded|complete
Determines if LV activation is allowed when PVs are miss‐
ing, e.g. because of a device failure. complete only al‐
lows LVs with no missing PVs to be activated, and is the
most restrictive mode. degraded allows RAID LVs with miss‐
ing PVs to be activated. (This does not include the "mir‐
ror" type, see "raid1" instead.) partial allows any LV
with missing PVs to be activated, and should only be used
for recovery or repair. For default, see lvm.conf(5) acti‐
vation_mode. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
--addtag Tag
Adds a tag to a PV, VG or LV. This option can be repeated
to add multiple tags at once. See lvm(8) for information
about tags.
--alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|inherit
Determines the allocation policy when a command needs to
allocate Physical Extents (PEs) from the VG. Each VG and LV
has an allocation policy which can be changed with
vgchange/lvchange, or overridden on the command line. nor‐
mal applies common sense rules such as not placing parallel
stripes on the same PV. inherit applies the VG policy to
an LV. contiguous requires new PEs be placed adjacent to
existing PEs. cling places new PEs on the same PV as ex‐
isting PEs in the same stripe of the LV. If there are suf‐
ficient PEs for an allocation, but normal does not use
them, anywhere will use them even if it reduces perfor‐
mance, e.g. by placing two stripes on the same PV. Option‐
al positional PV args on the command line can also be used
to limit which PVs the command will use for allocation.
See lvm(8) for more information about allocation.
--autoactivation String
Specify if autoactivation is being used from an event.
This allows the command to apply settings that are specific
to event activation, such as device scanning optimizations
using pvs_online files created by event-based pvscans.
-A|--autobackup y|n
Specifies if metadata should be backed up automatically af‐
ter a change. Enabling this is strongly advised! See
vgcfgbackup(8) for more information.
--commandprofile String
The command profile to use for command configuration. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--config String
Config settings for the command. These override lvm.conf(5)
settings. The String arg uses the same format as
lvm.conf(5), or may use section/field syntax. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about config.
-d|--debug ...
Set debug level. Repeat from 1 to 6 times to increase the
detail of messages sent to the log file and/or syslog (if
configured).
--deltag Tag
Deletes a tag from a PV, VG or LV. This option can be re‐
peated to delete multiple tags at once. See lvm(8) for in‐
formation about tags.
--detachprofile
Detaches a metadata profile from a VG or LV. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--devices PV
Devices that the command can use. This option can be re‐
peated or accepts a comma separated list of devices. This
overrides the devices file.
--devicesfile String
A file listing devices that LVM should use. The file must
exist in /etc/lvm/devices/ and is managed with the
lvmdevices(8) command. This overrides the lvm.conf(5) de‐
vices/devicesfile and devices/use_devicesfile settings.
--driverloaded y|n
If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-
mapper. For testing and debugging.
-f|--force ...
Override various checks, confirmations and protections.
Use with extreme caution.
-h|--help
Display help text.
-K|--ignoreactivationskip
Ignore the "activation skip" LV flag during activation to
allow LVs with the flag set to be activated.
--ignorelockingfailure
Allows a command to continue with read-only metadata opera‐
tions after locking failures.
--ignoremonitoring
Do not interact with dmeventd unless --monitor is speci‐
fied. Do not use this if dmeventd is already monitoring a
device.
--journal String
Record information in the systemd journal. This informa‐
tion is in addition to information enabled by the lvm.conf
log/journal setting. command: record information about the
command. output: record the default command output. de‐
bug: record full command debugging.
--lockopt String
Used to pass options for special cases to lvmlockd. See
lvmlockd(8) for more information.
--lockstart
Start the lockspace of a shared VG in lvmlockd. lvmlockd
locks becomes available for the VG, allowing LVM to use the
VG. See lvmlockd(8) for more information.
--lockstop
Stop the lockspace of a shared VG in lvmlockd. lvmlockd
locks become unavailable for the VG, preventing LVM from
using the VG. See lvmlockd(8) for more information.
--locktype sanlock|dlm|none
Change the VG lock type to or from a shared lock type used
with lvmlockd. See lvmlockd(8) for more information.
-l|--logicalvolume Number
Sets the maximum number of LVs allowed in a VG.
--longhelp
Display long help text.
-p|--maxphysicalvolumes Number
Sets the maximum number of PVs that can belong to the VG.
The value 0 removes any limitation. For large numbers of
PVs, also see options --pvmetadatacopies, and --vgmetadata‐
copies for improving performance.
--metadataprofile String
The metadata profile to use for command configuration. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--monitor y|n
Start (yes) or stop (no) monitoring an LV with dmeventd.
dmeventd monitors kernel events for an LV, and performs au‐
tomated maintenance for the LV in reponse to specific
events. See dmeventd(8) for more information.
--nohints
Do not use the hints file to locate devices for PVs. A com‐
mand may read more devices to find PVs when hints are not
used. The command will still perform standard hint file in‐
validation where appropriate.
--nolocking
Disable locking.
--noudevsync
Disables udev synchronisation. The process will not wait
for notification from udev. It will continue irrespective
of any possible udev processing in the background. Only use
this if udev is not running or has rules that ignore the
devices LVM creates.
-P|--partial
Commands will do their best to activate LVs with missing PV
extents. Missing extents may be replaced with error or ze‐
ro segments according to the missing_stripe_filler set‐
ting. Metadata may not be changed with this option.
-s|--physicalextentsize Size[m|UNIT]
Sets the physical extent size of PVs in the VG. The value
must be either a power of 2 of at least 1 sector (where the
sector size is the largest sector size of the PVs currently
used in the VG), or at least 128KiB. Once this value has
been set, it is difficult to change without recreating the
VG, unless no extents need moving. Before increasing the
physical extent size, you might need to use lvresize, pvre‐
size and/or pvmove so that everything fits. For example,
every contiguous range of extents used in a LV must start
and end on an extent boundary.
--poll y|n
When yes, start the background transformation of an LV. An
incomplete transformation, e.g. pvmove or lvconvert inter‐
rupted by reboot or crash, can be restarted from the last
checkpoint with --poll y. When no, background transforma‐
tion of an LV will not occur, and the transformation will
not complete. It may not be appropriate to immediately poll
an LV after activation, in which case --poll n can be used
to defer polling until a later --poll y command.
--profile String
An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depend‐
ing on the command.
--pvmetadatacopies 0|1|2
The number of metadata areas to set aside on a PV for stor‐
ing VG metadata. When 2, one copy of the VG metadata is
stored at the front of the PV and a second copy is stored
at the end. When 1, one copy of the VG metadata is stored
at the front of the PV. When 0, no copies of the VG meta‐
data are stored on the given PV. This may be useful in VGs
containing many PVs (this places limitations on the ability
to use vgsplit later.)
-q|--quiet ...
Suppress output and log messages. Overrides --debug and
--verbose. Repeat once to also suppress any prompts with
answer 'no'.
--readonly
Run the command in a special read-only mode which will read
on-disk metadata without needing to take any locks. This
can be used to peek inside metadata used by a virtual ma‐
chine image while the virtual machine is running. No at‐
tempt will be made to communicate with the device-mapper
kernel driver, so this option is unable to report whether
or not LVs are actually in use.
--refresh
If the LV is active, reload its metadata. This is not nec‐
essary in normal operation, but may be useful if something
has gone wrong, or if some form of manual LV sharing is be‐
ing used.
--reportformat basic|json
Overrides current output format for reports which is de‐
fined globally by the report/output_format setting in
lvm.conf(5). basic is the original format with columns and
rows. If there is more than one report per command, each
report is prefixed with the report name for identification.
json produces report output in JSON format. See
lvmreport(7) for more information.
-x|--resizeable y|n
Enables or disables the addition or removal of PVs to/from
a VG (by vgextend/vgreduce).
-S|--select String
Select objects for processing and reporting based on speci‐
fied criteria. The criteria syntax is described by --se‐
lect help and lvmreport(7). For reporting commands, one
row is displayed for each object matching the criteria.
See --options help for selectable object fields. Rows can
be displayed with an additional "selected" field (-o se‐
lected) showing 1 if the row matches the selection and 0
otherwise. For non-reporting commands which process LVM
entities, the selection is used to choose items to process.
--setautoactivation y|n
Set the autoactivation property on a VG or LV. Display the
property with vgs or lvs "-o autoactivation". When the au‐
toactivation property is disabled, the VG or LV will not be
activated by a command doing autoactivation (vgchange,
lvchange, or pvscan using -aay.) If autoactivation is dis‐
abled on a VG, no LVs will be autoactivated in that VG, and
the LV autoactivation property has no effect. If autoacti‐
vation is enabled on a VG, autoactivation can be disabled
for individual LVs.
--sysinit
Indicates that vgchange/lvchange is being invoked from ear‐
ly system initialisation scripts (e.g. rc.sysinit or an
initrd), before writable filesystems are available. As
such, some functionality needs to be disabled and this op‐
tion acts as a shortcut which selects an appropriate set of
options. Currently, this is equivalent to using --ignore‐
lockingfailure, --ignoremonitoring, --poll n, and setting
env var LVM_SUPPRESS_LOCKING_FAILURE_MESSAGES.
vgchange/lvchange skip autoactivation, and defer to pvscan
autoactivation.
--systemid String
Changes the system ID of the VG. Using this option re‐
quires caution because the VG may become foreign to the
host running the command, leaving the host unable to access
it. See lvmsystemid(7) for more information.
-t|--test
Run in test mode. Commands will not update metadata. This
is implemented by disabling all metadata writing but never‐
theless returning success to the calling function. This may
lead to unusual error messages in multi-stage operations if
a tool relies on reading back metadata it believes has
changed but hasn't.
-u|--uuid
Generate new random UUID for specified VGs.
-v|--verbose ...
Set verbose level. Repeat from 1 to 4 times to increase the
detail of messages sent to stdout and stderr.
--version
Display version information.
--[vg]metadatacopies all|unmanaged|Number
Number of copies of the VG metadata that are kept. VG
metadata is kept in VG metadata areas on PVs in the VG,
i.e. reserved space at the start and/or end of the PVs.
Keeping a copy of the VG metadata on every PV can reduce
performance in VGs containing a large number of PVs. When
this number is set to a non-zero value, LVM will automati‐
cally choose PVs on which to store metadata, using the
metadataignore flags on PVs to achieve the specified num‐
ber. The number can also be replaced with special string
values: unmanaged causes LVM to not automatically manage
the PV metadataignore flags. all causes LVM to first clear
the metadataignore flags on all PVs, and then to become un‐
managed.
-y|--yes
Do not prompt for confirmation interactively but always as‐
sume the answer yes. Use with extreme caution. (For auto‐
matic no, see -qq.)
VG Volume Group name. See lvm(8) for valid names.
Tag Tag name. See lvm(8) for information about tag names and
using tags in place of a VG, LV or PV.
Select Select indicates that a required positional parameter can
be omitted if the --select option is used. No arg appears
in this position.
String See the option description for information about the string
content.
Size[UNIT]
Size is an input number that accepts an optional unit. In‐
put units are always treated as base two values, regardless
of capitalization, e.g. 'k' and 'K' both refer to 1024.
The default input unit is specified by letter, followed by
|UNIT. UNIT represents other possible input units: b|B is
bytes, s|S is sectors of 512 bytes, k|K is KiB, m|M is MiB,
g|G is GiB, t|T is TiB, p|P is PiB, e|E is EiB. (This
should not be confused with the output control --units,
where capital letters mean multiple of 1000.)
See lvm(8) for information about environment variables used by
lvm. For example, LVM_VG_NAME can generally be substituted for a
required VG parameter.
If vgchange recognizes COW snapshot LVs that were dropped because
they ran out of space, it displays a message informing the admin‐
istrator that the snapshots should be removed.
Activate all LVs in all VGs on all existing devices.
vgchange -a y
Change the maximum number of LVs for an inactive VG.
vgchange -l 128 vg00
lvm(8), lvm.conf(5), lvmconfig(8), lvmdevices(8),
pvchange(8), pvck(8), pvcreate(8), pvdisplay(8), pvmove(8),
pvremove(8), pvresize(8), pvs(8), pvscan(8),
vgcfgbackup(8), vgcfgrestore(8), vgchange(8), vgck(8),
vgcreate(8), vgconvert(8), vgdisplay(8), vgexport(8), vgextend(8),
vgimport(8), vgimportclone(8), vgimportdevices(8), vgmerge(8),
vgmknodes(8), vgreduce(8), vgremove(8), vgrename(8), vgs(8),
vgscan(8), vgsplit(8),
lvcreate(8), lvchange(8), lvconvert(8), lvdisplay(8), lvextend(8),
lvreduce(8), lvremove(8), lvrename(8), lvresize(8), lvs(8),
lvscan(8),
lvm-fullreport(8), lvm-lvpoll(8), blkdeactivate(8), lvmdump(8),
dmeventd(8), lvmpolld(8), lvmlockd(8), lvmlockctl(8), cmirrord(8),
lvmdbusd(8), fsadm(8),
lvmsystemid(7), lvmreport(7), lvmcache(7), lvmraid(7), lvmthin(7),
lvmvdo(7), lvmautoactivation(7)
This page is part of the lvm2 (Logical Volume Manager 2) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.sourceware.org/lvm2/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, see ⟨https://github.com/lvmteam/lvm2/issues⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://sourceware.org/git/lvm2.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-08.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Red Hat, Inc. LVM TOOLS 2.03.35(2)-git (2025-07-30) VGCHANGE(8)
Pages that refer to this page: lvmcache(7), lvmsystemid(7), lvchange(8), lvconvert(8), lvcreate(8), lvdisplay(8), lvextend(8), lvm(8), lvmconfig(8), lvmdevices(8), lvmdiskscan(8), lvm-fullreport(8), lvm-lvpoll(8), lvmpolld(8), lvreduce(8), lvremove(8), lvrename(8), lvresize(8), lvs(8), lvscan(8), pvchange(8), pvck(8), pvcreate(8), pvdisplay(8), pvmove(8), pvremove(8), pvresize(8), pvs(8), pvscan(8), vgcfgbackup(8), vgcfgrestore(8), vgchange(8), vgck(8), vgconvert(8), vgcreate(8), vgdisplay(8), vgexport(8), vgextend(8), vgimport(8), vgimportclone(8), vgimportdevices(8), vgmerge(8), vgmknodes(8), vgreduce(8), vgremove(8), vgrename(8), vgs(8), vgscan(8), vgsplit(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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