We ran into a problem when a set of PVs were added without using the appropriate metadata size. Consequently, we cannot add and remove volumes, create or remove snaps, run vgreduce and pvmoreve or any almost any other LVM command without getting this message:
Metadata too large for circular buffer
In my research, it came down to this:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2011-March/msg00046.html
- Restore from backup configuration
- Create a new volume group and migrating the LVMs.
I am not enthused about the first option, but the second option is almost worse because we have about over 10 terabytes of data to move.
What other alternatives we can try? Note that we did attempt to use the file-based metadata option, but for some reason, lvm is ignoring that.
Platform: CentOS 5.7
We ended up having to do the following:
It worked. YMMV, of course, if you try this fix.
(Of note is that editing the VG configuration backup is not generally recommended)