VGCHANGE(8)

NAME
vgchange - change attributes of a volume group

SYNOPSIS
vgchange [-A|--autobackup{y|n}] [-a|--available{y|n}] [-d|--debug] [-h|--help] [-l|--logicalvolume MaxLogicalVolumes] [-v|--verbose] [--version] [-x|--allocation{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. 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

-A, --autobackup{y|n}
    Controls automatic backup of metadata after the change. See vgcfgbackup (8). Default is yes.

-a, --available{y|n}
    Controls the availability of the volume group for input/output. In other words: makes a volume group known/unknown to the kernel.

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

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

-l, --logicalvolume MaxLogicalVolumes
    Changes the maximum logical volume number of an existing inactive volume group.

-v, --verbose
    Displays verbose runtime information about vgchange's activities.

--verbose
    Displays version and exits successfully.

-x, --allocation{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

DIAGNOSTICS
vgchange returns an exit code of 0 for success and > 0 for error:
1  error writing VGDA to physical volume(s)
2  error changing extensibility of volume group
3  error doing backup of VGDA
4  extension of MaxLogicalVolume would cause overlapped physical extents
5  error backup of volume group metadata
6  error copying volume group metadata to work file
7  error creating volume group directory and special files
8  error removing volume group directory and special files
9  error setting up copy on write exception table
10 error reading copy on write exception table from disk(s)
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
If volume groups can't be activated, run vgscan(8) and retry.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

LVM_AUTOBACKUP
    If this variable is set to "no" then the automatic backup of VG metadata is turned off.

LVM_VG_MAX_BACKUPS
    This variable determines the backup history depth of kept VGDA copy files in /etc/lvmconf. It can be set to a positive number between 0 and 999. The higher this number is, the more changes you can restore using vgcfgrestore(8).

SEE ALSO
lvm(8), vgcreate(8)

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