PVCREATE(8)

NAME
pvcreate - create a physical volume

SYNOPSIS
pvcreate [-d/--debug] [-f[f]/--force [--force]] [-h/-?/--help] [-y/--yes] [-v/--verbose] PhysicalVolumePath [PhysicalVolumePath...]

DESCRIPTION
pvcreate allows you to setup the volume group descriptor area on one or more primary or extended disk partitions (partition system id must be 0x8e; see fdisk(8) ) on whole disks (sector 0 must be zeroed!), multiple (see mdadd(8) ) or loop (see losetup(8) ) devices. This command is the first step in using a disk with lvm(8). Continue with vgcreate(8) or vgextend(8) to create or extend volume groups.

  OPTIONS

-d, --debug
    Enables additional debugging output (if compiled with DEBUG).

-f[f], --force [--force]
    Force the creation without any confirmation. You can not recreate (reinitialize) a physical volume belonging to a volume group. In an emergency you can override this behaviour with -ff. You can not initialize an active physical volume with this command.

-y, --yes
    Answer yes to all questions.

-h, -?, --help
    Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

-v, --verbose
    Gives verbose runtime information about pvcreate's activities.

Example
"pvcreate /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde" creates volume group descriptor areas on partition #4 on SCSI disk #4 and on whole SCSI disk #5.

DIAGNOSTICS
pvcreate returns an exit code of 0 for success or > 0 for error:
1  no physical volume on command line
2  error removing existing lvmtab entry for new physical volume
3  error setting up physical volume structure
4  error writing physical volume structure to disk
5  wrong partition type identifier
6  error physical volume name
7  error getting size of physical volume
95 driver/module not in kernel
96 invalid I/O protocol version
97 error locking logical volume manager
98 invalid lvmtab (run vgscan(8))
99 invalid command line

See also
lvm(8), vgcreate(8), vgextend(8), lvcreate(8), fdisk(8)

AUTHOR
Heinz Mauelshagen <Linux-LVM@Sistina.com>