Provided by: lvm2_2.02.98-6ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
vgchange - change attributes of a volume group
SYNOPSIS
vgchange [--addtag Tag] [--alloc AllocationPolicy] [-A|--autobackup {y|n}] [-a|--activate
[a|e|l] {y|n}] [--monitor {y|n}] [--poll {y|n}] [-c|--clustered {y|n}] [-u|--uuid]
[-d|--debug] [--deltag Tag] [-h|--help] [--ignorelockingfailure] [--ignoremonitoring]
[--sysinit] [--noudevsync] [-l|--logicalvolume MaxLogicalVolumes] [-p|--maxphysicalvolumes
MaxPhysicalVolumes] [--[vg]metadatacopies] NumberOfCopies|unmanaged|all] [-P|--partial]
[-s|--physicalextentsize PhysicalExtentSize[bBsSkKmMgGtTpPeE]] [--refresh] [-t|--test]
[-v|--verbose] [--version] [-x|--resizeable {y|n}] [VolumeGroupName...]
DESCRIPTION
vgchange allows you to change the attributes of one or more volume groups. Its main
purpose is to activate and deactivate VolumeGroupName, or all volume groups if none is
specified. Only active volume groups are subject to changes and allow access to their
logical volumes. [Not yet implemented: During volume group activation, if vgchange
recognizes snapshot logical volumes which were dropped because they ran out of space, it
displays a message informing the administrator that such snapshots should be removed (see
lvremove(8)). ]
OPTIONS
See lvm(8) for common options.
-A, --autobackup {y|n}
Controls automatic backup of metadata after the change. See vgcfgbackup(8).
Default is yes.
-a, --activate [a|e|l]{y|n}
Controls the availability of the logical volumes in the volume group for
input/output. In other words, makes the logical volumes known/unknown to the
kernel. If autoactivation option is used (-aay), each logical volume in the volume
group is activated only if it matches an item in the
activation/auto_activation_volume_list set in lvm.conf. Autoactivation is not yet
supported for partial or clustered volume groups.
If clustered locking is enabled, add 'e' to activate/deactivate exclusively on one
node or 'l' to activate/deactivate only on the local node. Logical volumes with
single-host snapshots are always activated exclusively because they can only be
used on one node at once.
-c, --clustered {y|n}
If clustered locking is enabled, this indicates whether this Volume Group is shared
with other nodes in the cluster or whether it contains only local disks that are
not visible on the other nodes. If the cluster infrastructure is unavailable on a
particular node at a particular time, you may still be able to use Volume Groups
that are not marked as clustered.
-u, --uuid
Generate new random UUID for specified Volume Groups.
--monitor {y|n}
Start or stop monitoring a mirrored or snapshot logical volume with dmeventd, if it
is installed. If a device used by a monitored mirror reports an I/O error, the
failure is handled according to mirror_image_fault_policy and
mirror_log_fault_policy set in lvm.conf(5).
--poll {y|n}
Without polling a logical volume's backgrounded transformation process will never
complete. If there is an incomplete pvmove or lvconvert (for example, on rebooting
after a crash), use --poll y to restart the process from its last checkpoint.
However, it may not be appropriate to immediately poll a logical volume when it is
activated, use --poll n to defer and then --poll y to restart the process.
--sysinit
Indicates that vgchange(8) is being invoked from early system initialisation
scripts (e.g. rc.sysinit or an initrd), before writeable filesystems are available.
As such, some functionality needs to be disabled and this option acts as a shortcut
which selects an appropriate set of options. Currently this is equivalent to using
--ignorelockingfailure, --ignoremonitoring, --poll n and setting
LVM_SUPPRESS_LOCKING_FAILURE_MESSAGES environment variable.
If --sysinit is used in conjunction with lvmetad(8) enabled and running,
autoactivation is preferred over manual activation via direct vgchange call.
Logical volumes are autoactivated according to auto_activation_volume_list set in
lvm.conf(5).
--noudevsync
Disable udev synchronisation. The process will not wait for notification from udev.
It will continue irrespective of any possible udev processing in the background.
You should only use this if udev is not running or has rules that ignore the
devices LVM2 creates.
--ignoremonitoring
Make no attempt to interact with dmeventd unless --monitor is specified. Do not
use this if dmeventd is already monitoring a device.
-l, --logicalvolume MaxLogicalVolumes
Changes the maximum logical volume number of an existing inactive volume group.
-p, --maxphysicalvolumes MaxPhysicalVolumes
Changes the maximum number of physical volumes that can belong to this volume
group. For volume groups with metadata in lvm1 format, the limit is 255. If the
metadata uses lvm2 format, the value 0 removes this restriction: there is then no
limit. If you have a large number of physical volumes in a volume group with
metadata in lvm2 format, for tool performance reasons, you should consider some use
of --pvmetadatacopies 0 as described in pvcreate(8), and/or use --vgmetadatacopies.
--[vg]metadatacopies NumberOfCopies|unmanaged|all
Sets the desired number of metadata copies in the volume group. If set to a non-
zero value, LVM will automatically manage the 'metadataignore' flags on the
physical volumes (see pvchange or pvcreate --metadataignore) in order to achieve
NumberOfCopies copies of metadata. If set to unmanaged, LVM will not automatically
manage the 'metadataignore' flags. If set to all, LVM will first clear all of the
'metadataignore' flags on all metadata areas in the volume group, then set the
value to unmanaged. The vgmetadatacopies 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.
-s, --physicalextentsize PhysicalExtentSize[BbBsSkKmMgGtTpPeE]
Changes the physical extent size on physical volumes of this volume group. A size
suffix (k for kilobytes up to t for terabytes) is optional, megabytes is the
default if no suffix is present. The default is 4 MiB and it must be at least 1
KiB and a power of 2.
Before increasing the physical extent size, you might need to use lvresize,
pvresize and/or pvmove so that everything fits. For example, every contiguous
range of extents used in a logical volume must start and end on an extent boundary.
If the volume group metadata uses lvm1 format, extents can vary in size from 8KiB
to 16GiB and there is a limit of 65534 extents in each logical volume. The default
of 4 MiB leads to a maximum logical volume size of around 256GiB.
If the volume group metadata uses lvm2 format those restrictions do not apply, but
having a large number of extents will slow down the tools but have no impact on I/O
performance to the logical volume. The smallest PE is 1KiB.
The 2.4 kernel has a limitation of 2TiB per block device.
--refresh
If any logical volume in the volume group is active, reload its metadata. This is
not necessary in normal operation, but may be useful if something has gone wrong or
if you're doing clustering manually without a clustered lock manager.
-x, --resizeable {y|n}
Enables or disables the extension/reduction of this volume group with/by physical
volumes.
Examples
To activate all known volume groups in the system:
vgchange -a y
To change the maximum number of logical volumes of inactive volume group vg00 to 128.
vgchange -l 128 /dev/vg00
SEE ALSO
lvchange(8), lvm(8), vgcreate(8)