pvmove(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | USAGE | OPTIONS | VARIABLES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PVMOVE(8)                System Manager's Manual                PVMOVE(8)

NAME         top

       pvmove — Move extents from one physical volume to another

SYNOPSIS         top

       pvmove position_args
           [ option_args ]
           [ position_args ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       pvmove moves the allocated physical extents (PEs) on a source PV
       to one or more destination PVs.  You can optionally specify a
       source LV in which case only extents used by that LV will be moved
       to free (or specified) extents on the destination PV. If no
       destination PV is specified, the normal allocation rules for the
       VG are used.

       If pvmove is interrupted for any reason (e.g. the machine crashes)
       then run pvmove again without any PV arguments to restart any
       operations that were in progress from the last checkpoint.
       Alternatively, use the abort option at any time to abort the
       operation. The resulting location of LVs after an abort depends on
       whether the atomic option was used.

       More than one pvmove can run concurrently if they are moving data
       from different source PVs, but additional pvmoves will ignore any
       LVs already in the process of being changed, so some data might
       not get moved.

USAGE         top

       Move PV extents.

       pvmove PV
           [ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
           [ -n|--name LV ]
           [    --alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|
           inherit ]
           [    --atomic ]
           [    --noudevsync ]
           [    --reportformat basic|json ]
           [ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
           [ PV ... ]

       Continue or abort existing pvmove operations.

       pvmove
           [ COMMON_OPTIONS ]

       Common options for command:
           [ -b|--background ]
           [ -i|--interval Number ]
           [    --abort ]

       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         top


       --abort
              Abort  any  pvmove  operations in progress. If a pvmove was
              started with the --atomic option, then all LVs will  remain
              on the source PV.  Otherwise, segments that have been moved
              will  remain  on the destination PV, while unmoved segments
              will remain on the source PV.

       --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.

       --atomic
              Makes a pvmove operation atomic, ensuring that all affected
              LVs are moved to the destination PV, or none are if the op‐
              eration is aborted.

       -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.

       -b|--background
              If the operation requires polling, this option  causes  the
              command  to  return  before  the operation is complete, and
              polling is done in the background.

       --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).

       --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.

       -h|--help
              Display help text.

       -i|--interval Number
              Report progress at regular intervals.

       --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.

       --longhelp
              Display long help text.

       -n|--name String
              Move only the extents belonging to the named LV.

       --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.

       --profile String
              An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depend‐
              ing on the command.

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

       --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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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.)

VARIABLES         top

       PV     Physical Volume name, a device path under /dev.  For com‐
              mands managing physical extents, a PV positional arg gener‐
              ally 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.  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.)

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       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.

NOTES         top

       pvmove works as follows:

       1. A temporary 'pvmove' LV is created to store details of all the
       data movements required.

       2. Every LV in the VG is searched for contiguous data that need
       moving according to the command line arguments.  For each piece of
       data found, a new segment is added to the end of the pvmove LV.
       This segment takes the form of a temporary mirror to copy the data
       from the original location to a newly allocated location.  The
       original LV is updated to use the new temporary mirror segment in
       the pvmove LV instead of accessing the data directly.

       3. The VG metadata is updated on disk.

       4. The first segment of the pvmove LV is activated and starts to
       mirror the first part of the data.  Only one segment is mirrored
       at once as this is usually more efficient.

       5. A daemon repeatedly checks progress at the specified time in‐
       terval.  When it detects that the first temporary mirror is in
       sync, it breaks that mirror so that only the new location for that
       data gets used and writes a checkpoint into the VG metadata on
       disk.  Then it activates the mirror for the next segment of the
       pvmove LV.

       6. When there are no more segments left to be mirrored, the tempo‐
       rary LV is removed and the VG metadata is updated so that the LVs
       reflect the new data locations.

       Note that this new process cannot support the original LVM1 type
       of on-disk metadata.  Metadata can be converted using
       vgconvert(8).

       If the --atomic option is used, a slightly different approach is
       used for the move.  Again, a temporary 'pvmove' LV is created to
       store the details of all the data movements required.  This tempo‐
       rary LV contains all the segments of the various LVs that need to
       be moved.  However, in this case, an identical LV is allocated
       that contains the same number of segments and a mirror is created
       to copy the contents from the first temporary LV to the second.
       After a complete copy is made, the temporary LVs are removed,
       leaving behind the segments on the destination PV.  If an abort is
       issued during the move, all LVs being moved will remain on the
       source PV.

EXAMPLES         top

       Move all physical extents that are used by simple LVs on the spec‐
       ified PV to free physical extents elsewhere in the VG.
       pvmove /dev/sdb1

       Use a specific destination PV when moving physical extents.
       pvmove /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

       Move extents belonging to a single LV.
       pvmove -n lvol1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

       Rather than moving the contents of an entire device, it is possi‐
       ble to move a range of physical extents, for example numbers 1000
       to 1999 inclusive on the specified PV.
       pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999

       A range of physical extents to move can be specified as
       start+length. For example, starting from PE 1000. (Counting starts
       from 0, so this refers to the 1001st to the 2000th PE inclusive.)
       pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000+1000

       Move a range of physical extents to a specific PV (which must have
       sufficient free extents).
       pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1

       Move a range of physical extents to specific new extents on a new
       PV.
       pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1:0-999

       If the source and destination are on the same disk, the anywhere
       allocation policy is needed.
       pvmove --alloc anywhere /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdb1:0-999

       The part of a specific LV present within in a range of physical
       extents can also be picked out and moved.
       pvmove -n lvol1 /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1

SEE ALSO         top

       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)

COLOPHON         top

       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 2025-02-02.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-01-31.)  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
       man-pages@man7.org

Red Hat, Inc.     LVM TOOLS 2.03.31(2)-git (2025-01-14)         PVMOVE(8)

Pages that refer to this page: lvchange(8)lvconvert(8)lvcreate(8)lvdisplay(8)lvextend(8)lvm(8)lvmconfig(8)lvmdevices(8)lvmdiskscan(8)lvm-fullreport(8)lvm-lvpoll(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)