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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | USAGE | OPTIONS | VARIABLES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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VGCREATE(8) System Manager's Manual VGCREATE(8)
vgcreate — Create a volume group
vgcreate position_args
[ option_args ]
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.
vgcreate VG_new PV ...
[ -A|--autobackup y|n ]
[ -c|--clustered y|n ]
[ -l|--maxlogicalvolumes Number ]
[ -p|--maxphysicalvolumes Number ]
[ -M|--metadatatype lvm2 ]
[ -s|--physicalextentsize Size[m|UNIT] ]
[ -f|--force ]
[ -Z|--zero y|n ]
[ --addtag Tag ]
[ --alloc contiguous|cling|cling_by_tags|normal|anywhere|
inherit ]
[ --metadataprofile String ]
[ --labelsector Number ]
[ --metadatasize Size[m|UNIT] ]
[ --pvmetadatacopies 0|1|2 ]
[ --[vg]metadatacopies all|unmanaged|Number ]
[ --reportformat basic|json ]
[ --dataalignment Size[k|UNIT] ]
[ --dataalignmentoffset Size[k|UNIT] ]
[ --shared ]
[ --systemid String ]
[ --locktype sanlock|dlm|none ]
[ --setautoactivation y|n ]
[ COMMON_OPTIONS ]
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 ]
--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.
-c|--clustered y|n
This option was specific to clvm and is now replaced by the
--shared option with lvmlockd(8).
--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.
--dataalignment Size[k|UNIT]
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 --dataalign‐
mentoffset. Also specify an appropriate PE size when cre‐
ating a VG.
--dataalignmentoffset Size[k|UNIT]
Shift the start of the PV data area by this additional off‐
set.
-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.
-f|--force ...
Override various checks, confirmations and protections.
Use with extreme caution.
-h|--help
Display help text.
--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.
--labelsector Number
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 inclu‐
sive - see LABEL_SCAN_SECTORS in the source). Use with
care.
--lockopt String
Used to pass options for special cases to lvmlockd. See
lvmlockd(8) for more information.
--locktype sanlock|dlm|none
Specify the VG lock type directly in place of using
--shared. See lvmlockd(8) for more information.
--longhelp
Display long help text.
-l|--maxlogicalvolumes Number
Sets the maximum number of LVs allowed in a VG.
-p|--maxphysicalvolumes Number
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 --vgmetadata‐
copies for improving performance.
--metadataprofile String
The metadata profile to use for command configuration. See
lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
--metadatasize Size[m|UNIT]
The approximate amount of space used for each VG metadata
area. The size may be rounded.
-M|--metadatatype lvm2
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.
--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.
-s|--physicalextentsize Size[m|UNIT]
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 128KiB. Once this value has
been set, it is difficult to change without recreating the
VG, unless no extents need moving.
--profile String
An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depend‐
ing on the command.
--pvmetadatacopies 0|1|2
The number of metadata areas to set aside on a PV for stor‐
ing 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 meta‐
data 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.)
-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.
--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.
--shared
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.
--systemid String
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.
-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.
--[vg]metadatacopies all|unmanaged|Number
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 automati‐
cally choose PVs on which to store metadata, using the
metadataignore flags on PVs to achieve the specified num‐
ber. 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 un‐
managed.
-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
Controls if the first 4 sectors (2048 bytes) of the device
are wiped. The default is to wipe these sectors unless ei‐
ther or both of --restorefile or --uuid are specified.
VG Volume Group name. See lvm(8) for valid names.
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.)
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.
Create a VG with two PVs, using the default physical extent size.
vgcreate myvg /dev/sdk1 /dev/sdl1
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) VGCREATE(8)
Pages that refer to this page: lvmsystemid(7), 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)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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