So, here is the situation – pvcreate and vgcreate command throws errors shown below.
# pvcreate /dev/sdd1 Can't open /dev/sdd1 exclusively. Mounted filesystem?
# vgcreate vg1 /dev/sdd1 Can't open /dev/sdd1 exclusively. Mounted filesystem? Unable to add physical volume '/dev/sdd1' to volume group 'vg1'.
Probable Cause of the error
LVM will only create a pv label on a device if it is not currently in use. There are some of the other various causes for this issue, which includes:
- The device for pvcreate has a mounted filesystem.
- The device for pvcreate has a partition, but you are running pvcreate on the whole disk.
- The device for pvcreate is a dm-multipath and no longer has on-disk partitions but may still have partitions mapped in device-mapper tables.
- The device for pvcreate was previously an LVM PV, and there are still entries in the device-mapper table for this device.
1. Make sure the device is not mounted on which you trying to create PV.
# df -hP Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vg1-lv1 17G 4.3G 13G 26% /data
You can also run ‘fuser’ command on the partition to see what processes are accessing the device.
# fuser -m -v /dev/sdd1
2. If it is being used by a mount point which is currently mounted, umount it first.
# umount /data
3. If you are running pvcreate on the whole disk, remove any partition on that disk, or create a PV on a new partition.
# pvremove /dev/sdd1
4. Run a scan at PV,LV and VG level.
# pvscan
5. If the device is a dm(device mapper)-multipath device, then check for any stale entries in ‘dmsetup table‘. Remove stale entries if any.
# dmsetup info -C # dmsetup remove [dm_map_name]
Note : If the device is in use and if any service is using that, stop the service and unmount the file system (if it is mounted ) prior to performing the aforementioned steps.
