PVCREATE(8)

NAME
pvcreate - initialize a disk or partition for use by LVM

SYNOPSIS
pvcreate [-d|--debug] [-f[f]|--force [--force]] [-y|--yes] [-h|--help] [-v|--verbose] [-V|--version] PhysicalVolume [PhysicalVolume...]

DESCRIPTION
pvcreate initializes PhysicalVolume for later use by the Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Each PhysicalVolume can be a disk partition, whole disk, meta device, or loopback file. For DOS disk partitions, the partition id must be set to 0x8e using fdisk(8), cfdisk(8), or a equivalent. For whole disk devices only the partition table must be erased, which will effectively destroy all data on that disk. This can be done by zeroing the first sector with:

dd if=/dev/zero of=PhysicalVolume bs=512 count=1

Continue with vgcreate(8) to create a new volume group on PhysicalVolume, or vgextend(8) to add PhysicalVolume to an existing volume group.

  OPTIONS

-d, --debug
    Enables additional debugging output (if compiled with DEBUG).

-f, --force
    Force the creation without any confirmation. You can not recreate (reinitialize) a physical volume belonging to an existing volume group. In an emergency you can override this behaviour with -ff. In no case case can you initialize an active physical volume with this command.

-y, --yes
    Answer yes to all questions.

-h, --help
    Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

-v, --verbose
    Gives verbose runtime information about pvcreate's activities.

-V, --version
    Print the version number on standard output and exit successfully.

Example
Initialize partition #4 on the third SCSI disk and the entire fifth SCSI disk for later use by LVM:

pvcreate /dev/sdc4 /dev/sde

DIAGNOSTICS
pvcreate returns an exit code of 0 for success or > 0 for error:
1  no physical volume on command line
2  error removing existing lvmtab entry for new physical volume
3  error setting up physical volume structure
4  error writing physical volume structure to disk
5  wrong partition type identifier
6  error physical volume name
7  error getting size of physical volume
95 driver/module not in kernel
96 invalid I/O protocol version
97 error locking logical volume manager
98 invalid lvmtab (run vgscan(8))
99 invalid command line

SEE ALSO
lvm(8), vgcreate(8), vgextend(8), lvcreate(8), cfdisk(8), fdisk(8), losetup(8), mdadd(8)

AUTHOR
Heinz Mauelshagen <Linux-LVM@Sistina.com>