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.

-s, --size
    Overrides the size of the physical volume which is normally retrieved. Useful in rare case where this value is wrong. More useful to fake large physical volumes of up to 2 Terabyes - 1 Kilobyte on smaller devices for testing purposes only where no real access to data in created logical volumes is needed. If you wish to create the supported maximum, use "pvcreate -s 2147483647k PhysicalVolume [PhysicalVolume ...]". All other LVM tools will use this size with the exception of lvmdiskscan(8)

-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>