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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | USAGE | OPTIONS | VARIABLES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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LVCHANGE(8) System Manager's Manual LVCHANGE(8)
lvchange — Change the attributes of logical volume(s)
lvchange option_args position_args
[ option_args ]
-a|--activate y|n|ay
--activationmode partial|degraded|complete
--addtag Tag
--alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|inherit
-A|--autobackup y|n
--cachemode writethrough|writeback|passthrough
--cachepolicy String
--cachesettings String
--commandprofile String
--compression y|n
--config String
-C|--contiguous y|n
-d|--debug
--deduplication y|n
--deltag Tag
--detachprofile
--devices PV
--devicesfile String
--discards passdown|nopassdown|ignore
--driverloaded y|n
--errorwhenfull y|n
-f|--force
-h|--help
-K|--ignoreactivationskip
--ignorelockingfailure
--ignoremonitoring
--journal String
--lockopt String
--longhelp
-j|--major Number
--[raid]maxrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
--metadataprofile String
--minor Number
--[raid]minrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
--monitor y|n
--nohints
--nolocking
--noudevsync
-P|--partial
-p|--permission rw|r
-M|--persistent y|n
--poll y|n
--profile String
-q|--quiet
-r|--readahead auto|none|Number
--readonly
--rebuild PV
--refresh
--reportformat basic|json
--resync
-S|--select String
-k|--setactivationskip y|n
--setautoactivation y|n
--[raid]syncaction check|repair
--sysinit
-t|--test
-v|--verbose
--version
--[raid]writebehind Number
--[raid]writemostly PV[:t|n|y]
-y|--yes
-Z|--zero y|n
lvchange changes LV attributes in the VG, changes LV activation in
the kernel, and includes other utilities for LV maintenance.
Change a general LV attribute.
For options listed in parentheses, any one is
required, after which the others are optional.
lvchange
( -C|--contiguous y|n
-p|--permission rw|r
-r|--readahead auto|none|Number
-k|--setactivationskip y|n
-Z|--zero y|n
-M|--persistent n
--addtag Tag
--deltag Tag
--alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|
inherit
--compression y|n
--deduplication y|n
--detachprofile
--metadataprofile String
--profile String
--setautoactivation y|n
--errorwhenfull y|n
--discards passdown|nopassdown|ignore
--cachemode writethrough|writeback|passthrough
--cachepolicy String
--cachesettings String
--[raid]minrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
--[raid]maxrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
--[raid]writebehind Number
--[raid]writemostly PV[:t|n|y] )
VG|LV|Tag|Select ...
[ -a|--activate y|n|ay ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Resyncronize a mirror or raid LV.
Use to reset 'R' attribute on a not initially synchronized LV.
lvchange --resync VG|LV1|Tag|Select ...
[ -a|--activate y|n|ay ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
LV1 types: mirror raid
—
Resynchronize or check a raid LV.
lvchange --syncaction check|repair VG|LV1|Tag|Select ...
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
LV1 types: raid
—
Reconstruct data on specific PVs of a raid LV.
lvchange --rebuild PV VG|LV1|Tag|Select ...
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
LV1 types: raid
—
Activate or deactivate an LV.
lvchange -a|--activate y|n|ay VG|LV|Tag|Select ...
[ -P|--partial ]
[ -K|--ignoreactivationskip ]
[ --activationmode partial|degraded|complete ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ --ignorelockingfailure ]
[ --sysinit ]
[ --readonly ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Reactivate an LV using the latest metadata.
lvchange --refresh VG|LV|Tag|Select ...
[ -P|--partial ]
[ --activationmode partial|degraded|complete ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Start or stop monitoring an LV from dmeventd.
lvchange --monitor y|n VG|LV|Tag|Select ...
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Start or stop processing an LV conversion.
lvchange --poll y|n VG|LV|Tag|Select ...
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Make the minor device number persistent for an LV.
lvchange -M|--persistent y --minor Number LV
[ -j|--major Number ]
[ -a|--activate y|n|ay ]
[ --poll y|n ]
[ --monitor y|n ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
—
Common options for command:
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ -S|--select String ]
[ --ignoremonitoring ]
[ --noudevsync ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
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 ]
-a|--activate y|n|ay
Change the active state of LVs. An active LV can be used
through a block device, allowing data on the LV to be ac‐
cessed. y makes LVs active, or available. n makes LVs in‐
active, or unavailable. The block device for the LV is
added or removed from the system using device-mapper in the
kernel. A symbolic link /dev/VGName/LVName pointing to the
device node is also added/removed. All software and
scripts should access the device through the symbolic link
and present this as the name of the device. The location
and name of the underlying device node may depend on the
distribution, configuration (e.g. udev), or release ver‐
sion. ay specifies autoactivation, which is used by sys‐
tem-generated activation commands. By default, LVs are au‐
toactivated. An autoactivation property can be set on a VG
or LV to disable autoactivation, see --setautoactivation
y|n in vgchange, lvchange, vgcreate, and lvcreate. Display
the property with vgs or lvs "-o autoactivation". The
lvm.conf(5) auto_activation_volume_list includes names of
VGs or LVs that should be autoactivated, and anything not
listed is not autoactivated. When auto_activation_vol‐
ume_list is undefined (the default), it has no effect. If
auto_activation_volume_list is defined and empty, no LVs
are autoactivated. Items included by auto_activation_vol‐
ume_list will not be autoactivated if the autoactivation
property has been disabled. See lvmlockd(8) for more in‐
formation about activation options ey and sy for shared
VGs.
--activationmode partial|degraded|complete
Determines if LV activation is allowed when PVs are miss‐
ing, e.g. because of a device failure. complete only al‐
lows LVs with no missing PVs to be activated, and is the
most restrictive mode. degraded allows RAID LVs with miss‐
ing PVs to be activated. (This does not include the "mir‐
ror" type, see "raid1" instead.) partial allows any LV
with missing PVs to be activated, and should only be used
for recovery or repair. For default, see lvm.conf(5) acti‐
vation_mode. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
--addtag Tag
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.
--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.
-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.
--cachemode writethrough|writeback|passthrough
Specifies when writes to a cache LV should be considered
complete. writeback considers a write complete as soon as
it is stored in the cache pool. writethough considers a
write complete only when it has been stored in both the
cache pool and on the origin LV. While writethrough may be
slower for writes, it is more resilient if something should
happen to a device associated with the cache pool LV. With
passthrough, all reads are served from the origin LV (all
reads miss the cache) and all writes are forwarded to the
origin LV; additionally, write hits cause cache block in‐
validates. See lvmcache(7) for more information.
--cachepolicy String
Specifies the cache policy for a cache LV. See lvmcache(7)
for more information.
--cachesettings String
Specifies tunable values for a cache LV in "Key = Value"
form. Repeat this option to specify multiple values. (The
default values should usually be adequate.) The special
string value default switches settings back to their de‐
fault kernel values and removes them from the list of set‐
tings stored in LVM metadata. See lvmcache(7) for more in‐
formation.
--commandprofile String
The command profile to use for command configuration. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--compression y|n
Controls whether compression is enabled or disable for VDO
volume. See lvmvdo(7) for more information about VDO us‐
age.
--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.
-C|--contiguous y|n
Sets or resets the contiguous allocation policy for LVs.
Default is no contiguous allocation based on a next free
principle. It is only possible to change a non-contiguous
allocation policy to contiguous if all of the allocated
physical extents in the LV are already contiguous.
-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).
--deduplication y|n
Controls whether deduplication is enabled or disable for
VDO volume. See lvmvdo(7) for more information about VDO
usage.
--deltag Tag
Deletes a tag from a PV, VG or LV. This option can be re‐
peated to delete multiple tags at once. See lvm(8) for in‐
formation about tags.
--detachprofile
Detaches a metadata profile from a VG or LV. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--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.
--discards passdown|nopassdown|ignore
Specifies how the device-mapper thin pool layer in the ker‐
nel should handle discards. ignore causes the thin pool to
ignore discards. nopassdown causes the thin pool to
process discards itself to allow reuse of unneeded extents
in the thin pool. passdown causes the thin pool to process
discards itself (like nopassdown) and pass the discards to
the underlying device. See lvmthin(7) for more informa‐
tion.
--driverloaded y|n
If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-
mapper. For testing and debugging.
--errorwhenfull y|n
Specifies thin pool behavior when data space is exhausted.
When yes, device-mapper will immediately return an error
when a thin pool is full and an I/O request requires space.
When no, device-mapper will queue these I/O requests for a
period of time to allow the thin pool to be extended. Er‐
rors are returned if no space is available after the time‐
out. (Also see dm-thin-pool kernel module option
no_space_timeout.) See lvmthin(7) for more information.
-f|--force ...
Override various checks, confirmations and protections.
Use with extreme caution.
-h|--help
Display help text.
-K|--ignoreactivationskip
Ignore the "activation skip" LV flag during activation to
allow LVs with the flag set to be activated.
--ignorelockingfailure
Allows a command to continue with read-only metadata opera‐
tions after locking failures.
--ignoremonitoring
Do not interact with dmeventd unless --monitor is speci‐
fied. Do not use this if dmeventd is already monitoring a
device.
--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.
-j|--major Number
Sets the major number of an LV block device.
--[raid]maxrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
Sets the maximum recovery rate for a RAID LV. The rate
value is an amount of data per second for each device in
the array. Setting the rate to 0 means it will be unbound‐
ed. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
--metadataprofile String
The metadata profile to use for command configuration. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--minor Number
Sets the minor number of an LV block device.
--[raid]minrecoveryrate Size[k|UNIT]
Sets the minimum recovery rate for a RAID LV. The rate
value is an amount of data per second for each device in
the array. Setting the rate to 0 means it will be unbound‐
ed. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
--monitor y|n
Start (yes) or stop (no) monitoring an LV with dmeventd.
dmeventd monitors kernel events for an LV, and performs au‐
tomated maintenance for the LV in reponse to specific
events. See dmeventd(8) for more information.
--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.
-P|--partial
Commands will do their best to activate LVs with missing PV
extents. Missing extents may be replaced with error or ze‐
ro segments according to the missing_stripe_filler set‐
ting. Metadata may not be changed with this option.
-p|--permission rw|r
Set access permission to read only r or read and write rw.
-M|--persistent y|n
When yes, makes the specified minor number persistent.
--poll y|n
When yes, start the background transformation of an LV. An
incomplete transformation, e.g. pvmove or lvconvert inter‐
rupted by reboot or crash, can be restarted from the last
checkpoint with --poll y. When no, background transforma‐
tion of an LV will not occur, and the transformation will
not complete. It may not be appropriate to immediately poll
an LV after activation, in which case --poll n can be used
to defer polling until a later --poll y command.
--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'.
-r|--readahead auto|none|Number
Sets read ahead sector count of an LV. auto is the default
which allows the kernel to choose a suitable value automat‐
ically. none is equivalent to zero.
--readonly
Run the command in a special read-only mode which will read
on-disk metadata without needing to take any locks. This
can be used to peek inside metadata used by a virtual ma‐
chine image while the virtual machine is running. No at‐
tempt will be made to communicate with the device-mapper
kernel driver, so this option is unable to report whether
or not LVs are actually in use.
--rebuild PV
Selects a PV to rebuild in a raid LV. Multiple PVs can be
rebuilt by repeating this option. Use this option in place
of --resync or --syncaction repair when the PVs with cor‐
rupted data are known, and their data should be recon‐
structed rather than reconstructing default (rotating) da‐
ta. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
--refresh
If the LV is active, reload its metadata. This is not nec‐
essary in normal operation, but may be useful if something
has gone wrong, or if some form of manual LV sharing is be‐
ing used.
--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.
--resync
Initiates mirror synchronization. Synchronization generally
happens automatically, but this option forces it to run.
Also see --rebuild to synchronize a specific PV. During
synchronization, data is read from the primary mirror de‐
vice and copied to the others. This can take considerable
time, during which the LV is without a complete redundant
copy of the data. See lvmraid(7) for more information.
-S|--select String
Select objects for processing and reporting based on speci‐
fied criteria. The criteria syntax is described by --se‐
lect help and lvmreport(7). For reporting commands, one
row is displayed for each object matching the criteria.
See --options help for selectable object fields. Rows can
be displayed with an additional "selected" field (-o se‐
lected) showing 1 if the row matches the selection and 0
otherwise. For non-reporting commands which process LVM
entities, the selection is used to choose items to process.
-k|--setactivationskip y|n
Persistently sets (yes) or clears (no) the "activation
skip" flag on an LV. An LV with this flag set is not acti‐
vated unless the --ignoreactivationskip option is used by
the activation command. This flag is set by default on new
thin snapshot LVs. The flag is not applied to deactiva‐
tion. The current value of the flag is indicated in the
lvs lv_attr bits.
--setautoactivation y|n
Set the autoactivation property on a VG or LV. Display the
property with vgs or lvs "-o autoactivation". When the au‐
toactivation 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 dis‐
abled on a VG, no LVs will be autoactivated in that VG, and
the LV autoactivation property has no effect. If autoacti‐
vation is enabled on a VG, autoactivation can be disabled
for individual LVs.
--[raid]syncaction check|repair
Initiate different types of RAID synchronization. This
causes the RAID LV to read all data and parity blocks in
the array and check for discrepancies (mismatches between
mirrors or incorrect parity values). check will count but
not correct discrepancies. repair will correct discrepan‐
cies. See lvs(8) for reporting discrepancies found or re‐
paired.
--sysinit
Indicates that vgchange/lvchange is being invoked from ear‐
ly system initialisation scripts (e.g. rc.sysinit or an
initrd), before writable filesystems are available. As
such, some functionality needs to be disabled and this op‐
tion acts as a shortcut which selects an appropriate set of
options. Currently, this is equivalent to using --ignore‐
lockingfailure, --ignoremonitoring, --poll n, and setting
env var LVM_SUPPRESS_LOCKING_FAILURE_MESSAGES.
vgchange/lvchange skip autoactivation, and defer to pvscan
autoactivation.
-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.
--[raid]writebehind Number
The maximum number of outstanding writes that are allowed
to devices in a RAID1 LV that is marked write-mostly. Once
this value is exceeded, writes become synchronous (i.e. all
writes to the constituent devices must complete before the
array signals the write has completed). Setting the value
to zero clears the preference and allows the system to
choose the value arbitrarily.
--[raid]writemostly PV[:t|n|y]
Mark a device in a RAID1 LV as write-mostly. All reads to
these drives will be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
This keeps the number of I/Os to the drive to a minimum.
The default behavior is to set the write-mostly attribute
for the specified PV. It is also possible to remove the
write-mostly flag by adding the suffix :n at the end of the
PV name, or to toggle the value with the suffix :t. Repeat
this option to change the attribute on multiple PVs.
-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.)
-Z|--zero y|n
Set zeroing mode for thin pool. Note: already provisioned
blocks from pool in non-zero mode are not cleared in un‐
written parts when setting --zero y.
VG Volume Group name. See lvm(8) for valid names.
LV Logical Volume name. See lvm(8) for valid names. An LV
positional arg generally includes the VG name and LV name,
e.g. VG/LV. LV1 indicates the LV must have a specific
type, where the accepted LV types are listed. (raid repre‐
sents raid<N> type).
Tag Tag name. See lvm(8) for information about tag names and
using tags in place of a VG, LV or PV.
Select Select indicates that a required positional parameter can
be omitted if the --select option is used. No arg appears
in this position.
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.)
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.
Change LV permission to read-only:
lvchange -pr vg00/lvol1
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)
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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-08.) 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
[email protected]
Red Hat, Inc. LVM TOOLS 2.03.35(2)-git (2025-07-30) LVCHANGE(8)
Pages that refer to this page: lvmautoactivation(7), lvmcache(7), lvmraid(7), lvmthin(7), lvmvdo(7), lvchange(8), lvconvert(8), lvcreate(8), lvdisplay(8), lvextend(8), lvm(8), lvmconfig(8), lvmdevices(8), lvmdiskscan(8), lvm-fullreport(8), lvmlockd(8), lvm-lvpoll(8), lvmpolld(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)