PVSCAN(8) System Manager's Manual PVSCAN(8)
NAME
pvscan — List all physical volumes
SYNOPSIS
pvscan option_args position_args
[ option_args ]
[ position_args ]
-a|--activate y|n|ay
-A|--allpvs
--autoactivation String
--cache
--checkcomplete
--commandprofile String
--config String
-d|--debug
--devices PV
--devicesfile String
--driverloaded y|n
-e|--exported
-h|--help
--ignorelockingfailure
--journal String
--listlvs
--listvg
--lockopt String
--longhelp
-j|--major Number
--minor Number
--nohints
--nolocking
--noudevsync
-n|--novolumegroup
--profile String
-q|--quiet
--reportformat basic|json|json_std
-s|--short
-t|--test
--udevoutput
-u|--uuid
-v|--verbose
--version
--vgonline
-y|--yes
DESCRIPTION
When called without the --cache option, pvscan lists PVs on the system,
like pvs(8) or pvdisplay(8).
When --cache is used, pvscan updates runtime lvm state on the system, or
with -aay performs autoactivation.
pvscan --cache device
If device is present, lvm records that the PV on device is online. If
device is not present, lvm removes the online record for the PV. pvscan
only reads the named device.
pvscan --cache
Updates the runtime state for all lvm devices.
pvscan --cache -aay device
Performs the --cache steps for the device, then checks if the VG using
the device is complete. If so, LVs in the VG are autoactivated, the
same as vgchange -aay vgname would do. (A device name may be replaced
with major and minor numbers.)
pvscan --cache -aay
Performs the --cache steps for all devices, then autoactivates any com-
plete VGs.
pvscan --cache --listvg|--listlvs device
Performs the --cache steps for the device, then prints the name of the
VG using the device, or the names of LVs using the device. --checkcom-
plete is usually included to check if all PVs for the VG or LVs are on-
line. When this command is called by a udev rule, the output must con-
form to udev rule specifications (see --udevoutput.) The udev rule will
use the results to perform autoactivation.
Autoactivation of VGs or LVs can be enabled/disabled using vgchange or
lvchange with --setautoactivation y|n, or by adding names to lvm.conf(5)
activation/auto_activation_volume_list
See lvmautoactivation(7) for more information about how pvscan is used
for autoactivation.
USAGE
Display PV information.
pvscan
[ -e|--exported ]
[ -n|--novolumegroup ]
[ -s|--short ]
[ -u|--uuid ]
[ -A|--allpvs ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --reportformat basic|json|json_std ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Record that a PV is online or offline.
pvscan --cache
[ -j|--major Number ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --reportformat basic|json|json_std ]
[ --minor Number ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ String|PV ... ]
—
Record that a PV is online and autoactivate the VG if complete.
pvscan --cache -a|--activate ay
[ -j|--major Number ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --reportformat basic|json|json_std ]
[ --minor Number ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --autoactivation String ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
[ String|PV ... ]
—
Record that a PV is online and list the VG using the PV.
pvscan --cache --listvg PV
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --checkcomplete ]
[ --vgonline ]
[ --udevoutput ]
[ --autoactivation String ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Record that a PV is online and list LVs using the PV.
pvscan --cache --listlvs PV
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --checkcomplete ]
[ --vgonline ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
List LVs using the PV.
pvscan --listlvs PV
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
List the VG using the PV.
pvscan --listvg PV
[ 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 ]
OPTIONS
-a|--activate y|n|ay
Auto-activate LVs in a VG when the PVs scanned have completed the
VG. (Only ay is applicable.)
-A|--allpvs
Show information about PVs outside the devices file. Displays
the device ID for PVs included in the devices file.
--autoactivation String
Specify if autoactivation is being used from an event. This al-
lows the command to apply settings that are specific to event ac-
tivation, such as device scanning optimizations using pvs_online
files created by event-based pvscans.
--cache
Scan one or more devices and record that they are online.
--checkcomplete
Check if all the devices used by a VG or LV are present, and
print "complete" or "incomplete" for each listed VG or LV. This
option is used as a part of event-based autoactivation, so pvscan
will do nothing if this option is set and event_activation=0 in
the config settings.
--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) set-
tings. The String arg uses the same format as lvm.conf(5), or
may use section/field syntax. See lvm.conf(5) for more informa-
tion 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).
--devices PV
Restricts the devices that are visible and accessible to the com-
mand. Devices not listed will appear to be missing. This option
can be repeated, 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) com-
mand. This overrides the lvm.conf(5) devices/devicesfile and de-
vices/use_devicesfile settings.
--driverloaded y|n
If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-mapper.
For testing and debugging.
-e|--exported
Only show PVs belonging to exported VGs.
-h|--help
Display help text.
--ignorelockingfailure
Allows a command to continue with read-only metadata operations
after locking failures.
--journal String
Record information in the systemd journal. This information 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. debug: record full command
debugging.
--listlvs
Print a list of LVs that use the device.
--listvg
Print the VG that uses the device.
--lockopt String
Used to pass options for special cases to lvmlockd. See lvm-
lockd(8) for more information.
--longhelp
Display long help text.
-j|--major Number
The major number of a device.
--minor Number
The minor number of a device.
--nohints
Do not use the hints file to locate devices for PVs. A command
may read more devices to find PVs when hints are not used. The
command will still perform standard hint file invalidation where
appropriate.
--nolocking
Disable locking. Use with caution, concurrent commands may pro-
duce incorrect results.
--noudevsync
Disables udev synchronization. The process will not wait for no-
tification from udev. It will continue irrespective of any possi-
ble udev processing in the background. Only use this if udev is
not running or has rules that ignore the devices LVM creates.
-n|--novolumegroup
Only show PVs not belonging to any VG.
--profile String
An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depending on
the command.
-q|--quiet ...
Suppress output and log messages. Overrides --debug and --ver-
bose. Repeat once to also suppress any prompts with answer 'no'.
--reportformat basic|json|json_std
Overrides current output format for reports which is defined
globally by the report/output_format setting in lvm.conf(5). ba-
sic 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. json_std produces report output in JSON format
which is more compliant with JSON standard. See lvmreport(7) for
more information.
-s|--short
Short listing format.
-t|--test
Run in test mode. Commands will not update metadata. This is im-
plemented by disabling all metadata writing but nevertheless re-
turning 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.
--udevoutput
Command output is modified to be imported from a udev rule.
-u|--uuid
Show UUIDs in addition to device names.
-v|--verbose ...
Set verbose level. Repeat from 1 to 4 times to increase the de-
tail of messages sent to stdout and stderr.
--version
Display version information.
--vgonline
The first command to see a complete VG will report it uniquely.
Other commands to see the complete VG will report it differently.
-y|--yes
Do not prompt for confirmation interactively but always assume
the answer yes. Use with extreme caution. (For automatic no, see
-qq.)
VARIABLES
PV Physical Volume name, a device path under /dev. For commands
managing physical extents, a PV positional arg generally accepts
a suffix indicating a range (or multiple ranges) of physical ex-
tents (PEs). When the first PE is omitted, it defaults to the
start of the device, and when the last PE is omitted it defaults
to end. Start and end range (inclusive): PV[:PE-PE]... Start
and length range (counting from 0): PV[:PE+PE]...
String See the option description for information about the string con-
tent.
Size[UNIT]
Size is an input number that accepts an optional unit. Input
units are always treated as base two values, regardless of capi-
talization, e.g. 'k' and 'K' both refer to 1024. The default in-
put unit is specified by letter, followed by |UNIT. UNIT repre-
sents 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.)
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See lvm(8) for information about environment variables used by lvm. For
example, LVM_VG_NAME can generally be substituted for a required VG pa-
rameter.
SEE ALSO
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)
Red Hat, Inc. LVM TOOLS 2.03.31(2) (2025-02-27) PVSCAN(8)
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