VGCREATE(8)

NAME
vgcreate — Create a volume group

SYNOPSIS

vgcreate position_args
    [ option_args ]

DESCRIPTION
vgcreate creates a new VG on block devices. If the devices were not previously initialized as PVs with pvcreate(8), vgcreate will initialize them, making them PVs. The pvcreate options for initializing devices are also available with vgcreate.

When vgcreate uses an existing PV, that PV's existing values for metadata size, PE start, etc., are used, even if different values are specified in the vgcreate command. To change these values, first use pvremove on the device.

USAGE
vgcreate VG_new PV ...
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    [ --persist start ]
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    [ COMMON_OPTIONS ]

—

Common options for lvm:
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OPTIONS

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.

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. normal 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 to be placed adjacent to existing PEs. cling places new PEs on the same PV as existing PEs in the same stripe of the LV. If there are sufficient PEs for an allocation, but normal does not use them, anywhere will use them even if it reduces performance, e.g. by placing two stripes on the same PV. Optional 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.

Specifies if metadata should be backed up automatically after a change.
    Enabling this is strongly advised! See vgcfgbackup(8) for more information.

This option was specific to clvm and is now replaced by
    the --shared option with lvmlockd(8).

The command profile to use for command configuration.
    See lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.

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.

Align the start of a PV data area with a multiple of this number.
    To see the location of the first Physical Extent (PE) of an existing PV, use pvs -o +pe_start. In addition, it may be shifted by an alignment offset, see --dataalignmentoffset. Also specify an appropriate PE size when creating a VG.

Shift the start of the PV data area by this additional offset.

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).

Restricts the devices that are visible and accessible to the command.
    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.

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) devices/devicesfile and devices/use_devicesfile settings.

If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-mapper.
    For testing and debugging.

Override various checks, confirmations and protections.
    Use with extreme caution.

Display help text.

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.

By default the PV is labelled with an LVM2 identifier in its second
    sector (sector 1). This lets you use a different sector near the start of the disk (between 0 and 3 inclusive - see LABEL_SCAN_SECTORS in the source). Use with care.

Used to pass options for special cases to lvmlockd.
    See lvmlockd(8) for more information.

Specify the VG lock type directly in place of using --shared.
    See lvmlockd(8) for more information.

Display long help text.

Sets the maximum number of LVs allowed in a VG.

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 --vgmetadatacopies for improving performance.

The metadata profile to use for command configuration.
    See lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.

The approximate amount of space used for each VG metadata area.
    The size may be rounded.

Specifies the type of on-disk metadata to use.
    lvm2 (or just 2) is the current, standard format. lvm1 (or just 1) is no longer used.

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.

Disable locking. Use with caution, concurrent commands may produce
    incorrect results.

Persistent Reservation operation.
    start: register local key and acquire reservation. stop: unregister local key, releasing reservation. remove: preempt and abort another key. clear: remove reservation and keys. check: check if started. autostart: start if the VG autostart flag is set. lvmlocal.conf pr_key or host_id must be configured to use PR. For local VGs, Write Exclusive (WE) is used, and for shared VGs Write Exclusive, all registrants (WEAR) is used. Use --setpersist to automate and/or require PR.

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 128 KiB. Once this value has been set, it is difficult to change without recreating the VG, unless no extents need moving.

An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depending
    on the command.

The number of metadata areas to set aside on a PV for storing 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 metadata 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.)

Suppress output and log messages. Overrides --debug and --verbose.
    Repeat once to also suppress any prompts with answer 'no'.

Overrides current output format for reports which is defined 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. json_std produces report output in JSON format which is more compliant with JSON standard. See lvmreport(7) for more information.

Set the autoactivation property on a VG or LV.
    Display the property with vgs or lvs "-o autoactivation". When the autoactivation 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 disabled on a VG, no LVs will be autoactivated in that VG, and the LV autoactivation property has no effect. If autoactivation is enabled on a VG, autoactivation can be disabled for individual LVs.

Add or remove lock_args settings for a shared VG.
    The lock_args determine lock manager behavior for the VG. These settings are only allowed for lock_type sanlock. persist: use persistent reservations for lock recovery. lvmlockd will preempt-abort the persistent reservation of a failed lock owner so that the lock can be acquired. notimeout: use locks that do not time out when the owner fails. In this case, a lock owned by a failed host can only be acquired using the persist feature. nopersist: do not use the persist feature. timeout: do not use the notimeout feature. The default behavior with no settings configured is: nopersist and timeout.

Set flags to control persistent reservation behavior.
    y: set require and autostart flags. require: PR will be required to write or activate VG. autostart: PR will be automatically started. ptpl: use persist through power loss on devices. When autostart is enabled, autoactivation and auto-lockstart commands will first start PR. lvmlocal.conf pr_key or host_id must be configured to use PR. For local VGs, enabling system_id is also recommended.

Create a shared VG using lvmlockd if LVM is compiled with lockd support.
    lvmlockd will select lock type sanlock or dlm depending on which lock manager is running. This allows multiple hosts to share a VG on shared devices. lvmlockd and a lock manager must be configured and running. See lvmlockd(8) for more information about shared VGs.

Specifies the system ID that will be given to the new VG, overriding the
    system ID of the host running the command. A VG is normally created without this option, in which case the new VG is given the system ID of the host creating it. Using this option requires caution because the system ID of the new VG may not match the system ID of the host running the command, leaving the VG inaccessible to the host. See lvmsystemid(7) for more information.

Run in test mode. Commands will not update metadata.
    This is implemented by disabling all metadata writing but nevertheless 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.

Set verbose level. Repeat from 1 to 4 times to increase the detail
    of messages sent to stdout and stderr.

Display version information.

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 automatically choose PVs on which to store metadata, using the metadataignore flags on PVs to achieve the specified number. 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 unmanaged.

Do not prompt for confirmation interactively but always assume the
    answer yes. Use with extreme caution. (For automatic no, see -qq.)

Controls if the first 4 sectors (2048 bytes) of the device are wiped.
    The default is to wipe these sectors unless either or both of --restorefile or --uuid are specified.

VARIABLES

VG  Volume Group name. See lvm(8) for valid names.

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 extents (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 content.

Size[UNIT]
    Size is an input number that accepts an optional unit. Input 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.)

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 parameter.

EXAMPLES
Create a VG with two PVs, using the default physical extent size.
vgcreate myvg /dev/sdk1 /dev/sdl1

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)