Ubuntu Manpage: lvm.conf - Configuration file for LVM2

Provided by: lvm2_2.02.98-6ubuntu2_amd64

NAME

       lvm.conf - Configuration file for LVM2

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/lvm/lvm.conf

DESCRIPTION

       lvm.conf  is loaded during the initialisation phase of lvm(8).  This file can in turn lead
       to other files being loaded - settings read in  later  override  earlier  settings.   File
       timestamps  are  checked  between  commands  and  if  any  have changed, all the files are
       reloaded.

       Use lvm dumpconfig to check what settings are in use.

SYNTAX

       This section describes the configuration file syntax.

       Whitespace is not significant unless it is within quotes.  This provides a wide choice  of
       acceptable indentation styles.  Comments begin with # and continue to the end of the line.
       They are treated as whitespace.

       Here is an informal grammar:

       file = value*
              A configuration file consists of a set of values.

       value = section | assignment
              A value can either be a new section, or an assignment.

       section = identifier '{' value* '}'
              A section is groups associated values together.
              It is denoted by a name and delimited by curly brackets.
              e.g. backup {
                        ...
                   }

       assignment = identifier '=' ( array | type )
              An assignment associates a type with an identifier.
              e.g. max_archives = 42

       array =  '[' ( type ',')* type ']' | '[' ']'
              Inhomogeneous arrays are supported.
              Elements must be separated by commas.
              An empty array is acceptable.

       type = integer | float | string
              integer = [0-9]*
              float = [0-9]*'.'[0-9]*
              string = '"'.*'"'

              Strings must be enclosed in double quotes.

SECTIONS

The sections that may be present in the file are:

devices — Device settings

dir — Directory in which to create volume group device nodes. Defaults to "/dev".
Commands also accept this as a prefix on volume group names.

scan — List of directories to scan recursively for LVM physical volumes. Devices
in directories outside this hierarchy will be ignored. Defaults to "/dev".

preferred_names — List of patterns compared in turn against all the pathnames
referencing the same device in in the scanned directories. The pathname that
matches the earliest pattern in the list is the one used in any output. As an
example, if device-mapper multipathing is used, the following will select multipath
device names:
devices { preferred_names = [ "^/dev/mapper/mpath" ] }

filter — List of patterns to apply to devices found by a scan. Patterns are
regular expressions delimited by any character and preceded by a (for accept) or r
(for reject). The list is traversed in order, and the first regex that matches
determines if the device will be accepted or rejected (ignored). Devices that
don't match any patterns are accepted. If you want to reject patterns that don't
match, end the list with "r/.*/". If there are several names for the same device
(e.g. symbolic links in /dev), if the first matching pattern in the list for any of
the names is an a pattern, the device is accepted; otherwise if the first matching
pattern in the list for any of the names is an r pattern it is rejected; otherwise
it is accepted. As an example, to ignore /dev/cdrom you could use:
devices { filter=["r|cdrom|"] }

cache_dir — Persistent filter cache file directory. Defaults to "/etc/lvm/cache".

write_cache_state — Set to 0 to disable the writing out of the persistent filter
cache file when lvm exits. Defaults to 1.

types — List of pairs of additional acceptable block device types found in
/proc/devices together with maximum (non-zero) number of partitions (normally 16).
By default, LVM2 supports ide, sd, md, loop, dasd, dac960, nbd, ida, cciss, ubd,
ataraid, drbd, power2, i2o_block and iseries/vd. Block devices with major numbers
of different types are ignored by LVM2. Example: types = ["fd", 16]. To create
physical volumes on device-mapper volumes created outside LVM2, perhaps encrypted
ones from cryptsetup, you'll need types = ["device-mapper", 16]. But if you do
this, be careful to avoid recursion within LVM2. The figure for number of
partitions is not currently used in LVM2 - and might never be.

sysfs_scan — If set to 1 and your kernel supports sysfs and it is mounted, sysfs
will be used as a quick way of filtering out block devices that are not present.

md_component_detection — If set to 1, LVM2 will ignore devices used as components
of software RAID (md) devices by looking for md superblocks. This doesn't always
work satisfactorily e.g. if a device has been reused without wiping the md
superblocks first.

md_chunk_alignment — If set to 1, and a Physical Volume is placed directly upon an
md device, LVM2 will align its data blocks with the md device's stripe-width.

data_alignment_detection — If set to 1, and your kernel provides topology
information in sysfs for the Physical Volume, the start of data area will be
aligned on a multiple of the ’minimum_io_size’ or ’optimal_io_size’ exposed in
sysfs. minimum_io_size is the smallest request the device can perform without
incurring a read-modify-write penalty (e.g. MD's chunk size). optimal_io_size is
the device's preferred unit of receiving I/O (e.g. MD's stripe width).
minimum_io_size is used if optimal_io_size is undefined (0). If both
md_chunk_alignment and data_alignment_detection are enabled the result of
data_alignment_detection is used.

data_alignment — Default alignment (in KB) of start of data area when creating a
new Physical Volume using the lvm2 format. If a Physical Volume is placed directly
upon an md device and md_chunk_alignment or data_alignment_detection is enabled
this parameter is ignored. Set to 0 to use the default alignment of 64KB or the
page size, if larger.

data_alignment_offset_detection — If set to 1, and your kernel provides topology
information in sysfs for the Physical Volume, the start of the aligned data area of
the Physical Volume will be shifted by the alignment_offset exposed in sysfs.

To see the location of the first Physical Extent of an existing Physical Volume use
pvs -o +pe_start . It will be a multiple of the requested data_alignment plus the
alignment_offset from data_alignment_offset_detection (if enabled) or the pvcreate
commandline.

disable_after_error_count — During each LVM operation errors received from each
device are counted. If the counter of a particular device exceeds the limit set
here, no further I/O is sent to that device for the remainder of the respective
operation. Setting the parameter to 0 disables the counters altogether.

pv_min_size — Minimal size (in KB) of the block device which can be used as a PV.
In clustered environment all nodes have to use the same value. Any value smaller
than 512KB is ignored. Up to and include version 2.02.84 the default was 512KB.
From 2.02.85 onwards it was changed to 2MB to avoid floppy drives by default.

issue_discards — Issue discards to a logical volumes's underlying physical
volume(s) when the logical volume is no longer using the physical volumes' space
(e.g. lvremove, lvreduce, etc). Discards inform the storage that a region is no
longer in use. Storage that supports discards advertise the protocol specific way
discards should be issued by the kernel (TRIM, UNMAP, or WRITE SAME with UNMAP bit
set). Not all storage will support or benefit from discards but SSDs and thinly
provisioned LUNs generally do. If set to 1, discards will only be issued if both
the storage and kernel provide support.

allocation — Space allocation policies

cling_tag_list — List of PV tags matched by the cling allocation policy.

When searching for free space to extend an LV, the cling allocation policy will
choose space on the same PVs as the last segment of the existing LV. If there is
insufficient space and a list of tags is defined here, it will check whether any of
them are attached to the PVs concerned and then seek to match those PV tags between
existing extents and new extents.

The @ prefix for tags is required. Use the special tag "@*" as a wildcard to match
any PV tag and so use all PV tags for this purpose.

For example, LVs are mirrored between two sites within a single VG. PVs are tagged
with either @site1 or @site2 to indicate where they are situated and these two PV
tags are selected for use with this allocation policy:

cling_tag_list = [ "@site1", "@site2" ]

log — Default log settings

file — Location of log file. If this entry is not present, no log file is written.

overwrite — Set to 1 to overwrite the log file each time a tool is invoked. By
default tools append messages to the log file.

level — Log level (0-9) of messages to write to the file. 9 is the most verbose; 0
should produce no output.

verbose — Default level (0-3) of messages sent to stdout or stderr. 3 is the most
verbose; 0 should produce the least output.

silent — Set to 1 to suppress all non-essential tool output. When set, display and
reporting tools will still write the requested device properties to standard
output, but messages confirming that something was or wasn't changed will be
reduced to the 'verbose' level and not appear unless -v is supplied.

syslog — Set to 1 (the default) to send log messages through syslog. Turn off by
setting to 0. If you set to an integer greater than one, this is used -
unvalidated - as the facility. The default is LOG_USER. See
/usr/include/sys/syslog.h for safe facility values to use. For example, LOG_LOCAL0
might be 128.

indent — When set to 1 (the default) messages are indented according to their
severity, two spaces per level. Set to 0 to turn off indentation.

command_names — When set to 1, the command name is used as a prefix for each
message. Default is 0 (off).

prefix — Prefix used for all messages (after the command name). Default is two
spaces.

activation — Set to 1 to log messages while devices are suspended during
activation. Only set this temporarily while debugging a problem because in low
memory situations this setting can cause your machine to lock up.

backup — Configuration for metadata backups.

archive_dir — Directory used for automatic metadata archives. Backup copies of
former metadata for each volume group are archived here. Defaults to
"/etc/lvm/archive".

backup_dir — Directory used for automatic metadata backups. A single backup copy
of the current metadata for each volume group is stored here. Defaults to
"/etc/lvm/backup".

archive — Whether or not tools automatically archive existing metadata into
archive_dir before making changes to it. Default is 1 (automatic archives
enabled). Set to 0 to disable. Disabling this might make metadata recovery
difficult or impossible if something goes wrong.

backup — Whether or not tools make an automatic backup into backup_dir after
changing metadata. Default is 1 (automatic backups enabled). Set to 0 to disable.
Disabling this might make metadata recovery difficult or impossible if something
goes wrong.

retain_min — Minimum number of archives to keep. Defaults to 10.

retain_days — Minimum number of days to keep archive files. Defaults to 30.

shell — LVM2 built-in readline shell settings

history_size — Maximum number of lines of shell history to retain (default 100) in
$HOME/.lvm_history

global — Global settings

test — If set to 1, run tools in test mode i.e. no changes to the on-disk metadata
will get made. It's equivalent to having the -t option on every command.

activation — Set to 0 to turn off all communication with the device-mapper driver.
Useful if you want to manipulate logical volumes while device-mapper is not present
in your kernel.

proc — Mount point of proc filesystem. Defaults to /proc.

umask — File creation mask for any files and directories created. Interpreted as
octal if the first digit is zero. Defaults to 077. Use 022 to allow other users
to read the files by default.

format — The default value of --metadatatype used to determine which format of
metadata to use when creating new physical volumes and volume groups. lvm1 or lvm2.

fallback_to_lvm1 — Set this to 1 if you need to be able to switch between 2.4
kernels using LVM1 and kernels including device-mapper. The LVM2 tools should be
installed as normal and the LVM1 tools should be installed with a .lvm1 suffix e.g.
vgscan.lvm1. If an LVM2 tool is then run but unable to communicate with device-
mapper, it will automatically invoke the equivalent LVM1 version of the tool. Note
that for LVM1 tools to manipulate physical volumes and volume groups created by
LVM2 you must use --metadataformat lvm1 when creating them.

library_dir — A directory searched for LVM2's shared libraries ahead of the places
dlopen (3) searches.

format_libraries — A list of shared libraries to load that contain code to process
different formats of metadata. For example, liblvm2formatpool.so is needed to read
GFS pool metadata if LVM2 was configured --with-pool=shared.

locking_type — What type of locking to use. 1 is the default, which use flocks on
files in locking_dir (see below) to avoid conflicting LVM2 commands running
concurrently on a single machine. 0 disables locking and risks corrupting your
metadata. If set to 2, the tools will load the external locking_library (see
below). If the tools were configured --with-cluster=internal (the default) then 3
means to use built-in cluster-wide locking. Type 4 enforces read-only metadata and
forbids any operations that might want to modify Volume Group metadata. All
changes to logical volumes and their states are communicated using locks.

wait_for_locks — When set to 1, the default, the tools wait if a lock request
cannot be satisfied immediately. When set to 0, the operation is aborted instead.

locking_dir — The directory LVM2 places its file locks if locking_type is set to 1.
The default is /var/lock/lvm.

locking_library — The name of the external locking library to load if locking_type
is set to 2. The default is liblvm2clusterlock.so. If you need to write such a
library, look at the lib/locking source code directory.

tags — Host tag settings

hosttags — If set to 1, create a host tag with the machine name. Setting this to 0
does nothing, neither creating nor destroying any tag. The machine name used is
the nodename as returned by uname (2).

Additional host tags to be set can be listed here as subsections. The @ prefix for
tags is optional. Each of these host tag subsections can contain a host_list array
of host names. If any one of these entries matches the machine name exactly then
the host tag gets defined on this particular host, otherwise it doesn't.

After lvm.conf has been processed, LVM2 works through each host tag that has been
defined in turn, and if there is a configuration file called lvm_<host_tag>.conf it
attempts to load it. Any settings read in override settings found in earlier
files. Any additional host tags defined get appended to the search list, so in
turn they can lead to further configuration files being processed. Use lvm
dumpconfig to check the result of config file processing.

The following example always sets host tags tag1 and sets tag2 on machines fs1 and
fs2:

tags { tag1 { } tag2 { host_list = [ "fs1", "fs2" ] } }

These options are useful if you are replicating configuration files around a
cluster. Use of hosttags = 1 means every machine can have static and identical
local configuration files yet use different settings and activate different logical
volumes by default. See also volume_list below and --addtag in lvm (8).

activation — Settings affecting device-mapper activation

missing_stripe_filler — When activating an incomplete logical volume in partial
mode, this option dictates how the missing data is replaced. A value of "error"
will cause activation to create error mappings for the missing data, meaning that
read access to missing portions of the volume will result in I/O errors. You can
instead also use a device path, and in that case this device will be used in place
of missing stripes. However, note that using anything other than "error" with
mirrored or snapshotted volumes is likely to result in data corruption. For
instructions on how to create a device that always returns zeros, see lvcreate (8).

mirror_region_size — Unit size in KB for copy operations when mirroring.

readahead — Used when there is no readahead value stored in the volume group
metadata. Set to none to disable readahead in these circumstances or auto to use
the default value chosen by the kernel.

reserved_memory, reserved_stack — How many KB to reserve for LVM2 to use while
logical volumes are suspended. If insufficient memory is reserved before
suspension, there is a risk of machine deadlock.

process_priority — The nice value to use while devices are suspended. This is set
to a high priority so that logical volumes are suspended (with I/O generated by
other processes to those logical volumes getting queued) for the shortest possible
time.

volume_list — This acts as a filter through which all requests to activate a
logical volume on this machine are passed. A logical volume is only activated if
it matches an item in the list. Tags must be preceded by @ and are checked against
all tags defined in the logical volume and volume group metadata for a match. @*
is short-hand to check every tag set on the host machine (see tags above). Logical
volume and volume groups can also be included in the list by name e.g. vg00,
vg00/lvol1.

auto_activation_volume_list — This acts as a filter through which all requests to
autoactivate a logical volume on this machine are passed. A logical volume is
autoactivated if it matches an item in the list. Volumes must also pass the
volume_list filter, if present. Tags must be preceded by @ and are checked against
all tags defined in the logical volume and volume group metadata for a match. @* is
short-hand to check every tag set on the host machine (see tags above). Logical
volume and volume groups can also be included in the list by name e.g. vg00,
vg00/lvol1.

read_only_volume_list — This acts as a filter through which all requests to
activate a logical volume on this machine are passed. A logical volume is
activated in read-only mode (instead of read-write) if it matches an item in the
list. Volumes must first pass the volume_list filter, if present. Tags must be
preceded by @ and are checked against all tags defined in the logical volume and
volume group metadata for a match. @* is short-hand to check every tag set on the
host machine (see tags above). Logical volume and volume groups can also be
included in the list by name e.g. vg00, vg00/lvol1.

metadata — Advanced metadata settings

pvmetadatacopies — When creating a physical volume using the LVM2 metadata format,
this is the default number of copies of metadata to store on each physical volume.
Currently it can be set to 0, 1 or 2. The default is 1. If set to 2, one copy is
placed at the beginning of the disk and the other is placed at the end. It can be
overridden on the command line with --pvmetadatacopies (see pvcreate). If creating
a volume group with just one physical volume, it's a good idea to have 2 copies.
If creating a large volume group with many physical volumes, you may decide that 3
copies of the metadata is sufficient, i.e. setting it to 1 on three of the physical
volumes, and 0 on the rest. Every volume group must contain at least one physical
volume with at least 1 copy of the metadata (unless using the text files described
below). The disadvantage of having lots of copies is that every time the tools
access the volume group, every copy of the metadata has to be accessed, and this
slows down the tools.

pvmetadatasize — Approximate number of sectors to set aside for each copy of the
metadata. Volume groups with large numbers of physical or logical volumes, or
volumes groups containing complex logical volume structures will need additional
space for their metadata. The metadata areas are treated as circular buffers, so
unused space becomes filled with an archive of the most recent previous versions of
the metadata.

pvmetadataignore When creating a physical volume using the LVM2 metadata format,
this states whether metadata areas should be ignored. The default is "n". If
metadata areas on a physical volume are ignored, LVM will not not store metadata in
the metadata areas present on newly created Physical Volumes. The option can be
overridden on the command line with --metadataignore (See pvcreate and pvchange).
Metadata areas cannot be created or extended after Logical Volumes have been
allocated on the device. If you do not want to store metadata on this device, it
is still wise always to allocate a metadata area (use a non-zero value for
--pvmetadatacopies) in case you need it in the future and to use this option to
instruct LVM2 to ignore it.

vgmetadatacopies — When creating a volume group using the LVM2 metadata format,
this is the default number of copies of metadata desired across all the physical
volumes in the volume group. If set to a non-zero value, LVM will automatically
set or clear the metadataignore flag on the physical volumes (see pvcreate and
pvchange --metadataignore) in order to achieve the desired number of metadata
copies. An LVM command that adds or removes physical volumes (for example,
vgextend, vgreduce, vgsplit, or vgmerge), may cause LVM to automatically set or
clear the metadataignore flags. Also, if physical volumes go missing or reappear,
or a new number of copies is explicitly set (see vgchange --vgmetadatacopies), LVM
may adjust the metadataignore flags. Set vgmetadatacopies to 0 instructs LVM not
to set or clear the metadataignore flags automatically. You may set a value larger
than the sum of all metadata areas on all physical volumes. The value can be
overridden on the command line with --vgmetadatacopies for various commands (for
example, vgcreate and vgchange), and can be queryied with the vg_mda_copies field
of vgs. This option is useful for volume groups containing large numbers of
physical volumes with metadata as it may be used to minimize metadata read and
write overhead.

dirs — List of directories holding live copies of LVM2 metadata as text files.
These directories must not be on logical volumes. It is possible to use LVM2 with
a couple of directories here, preferably on different (non-logical-volume)
filesystems and with no other on-disk metadata, pvmetadatacopies = 0.
Alternatively these directories can be in addition to the on-disk metadata areas.
This feature was created during the development of the LVM2 metadata before the new
on-disk metadata areas were designed and no longer gets tested. It is not
supported under low-memory conditions, and it is important never to edit these
metadata files unless you fully understand how things work: to make changes you
should always use the tools as normal, or else vgcfgbackup, edit backup,
vgcfgrestore.

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