HP-UX Logical Volume Manager (LVM) Commands with an Example

In this post, You can get an idea about HP-UX logical volume manager commands with an example. As you know LVM is basically used for disk management in operating system that allow to manager the physical disks and logical volume.

Please find the below HP-UX LVM commands with an example.

1. Create a new volume group, logical volume and file system:

You can used the below command in HP-UX operating system to create a new volume group, logical volume and file system.

hpx:/>pvcreate /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0

For creating a new volume group first we need to create physical volume as describe in above command.

hpx:/>mkdir /dev/vg01

hpx:/>mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64 0x010000

In above step we will create a directory where we need to create a volume group.

hpx:/>vgcreate /dev/vg01 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0

After successfully creation of volume group we will create a new logical voulme as describe in below command.

hpx:/>lvcreate -L 2048 /dev/vg01

hpx:/>newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg01/vgvol1

Using above command we create a new file system now in next step we will create a directory where we need to mount the newly created file system.

hpx:/>mkdir /backup

hpx:/>mount /dev/vg01/vgvol1 /backup

Once you mount the logical voulme with file system you can run the file system checking command to verify that mounting is succesfully or not.

2. Create a stripped filesystem:

In this, we will create a stripped file system with the help of volume group and logical voulme.

hpx:/>lvcreate -i 2 -I 32 -L 48 -n vgvol1 /dev/vg01

-i number of stripes

-I stripe size of 32KB

-L size of the volume

3. HP-UX display boot information:

You can use the below command to display boot information.

hpx:/>lvlnboot -v /dev/vg00

Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:

Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:

        /dev/dsk/c2t0d0 (0/1/1/0.0.0) -- Boot Disk

        /dev/dsk/c2t1d0 (0/1/1/0.1.0) -- Boot Disk

Boot: lvol1     on:     /dev/dsk/c2t0d0

                        /dev/dsk/c2t1d0

Root: lvol3     on:     /dev/dsk/c2t0d0

                        /dev/dsk/c2t1d0

Swap: lvol2     on:     /dev/dsk/c2t0d0

                        /dev/dsk/c2t1d0

Dump: lvol2     on:     /dev/dsk/c2t0d0, 0

When you run the above command you can find the above output , if you see the boot information you can find you have two disk which is available for boot.

4. HP-UX display all disks system information:

hpx:/> ioscan -funC disk

Class     I  H/W Path        Driver   S/W State   H/W Type     Description

==============================================================

disk      0  0/0/2/0.0.0.0   sdisk    CLAIMED     DEVICE       TEAC    DV-28E-N

                            /dev/dsk/c0t0d0   /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0

disk      1  0/1/1/0.0.0     sdisk    CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP 146 GMAX3147NC

                            /dev/dsk/c2t0d0   /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0

disk      2  0/1/1/0.1.0     sdisk    CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP 146 GMAX3147NC

                            /dev/dsk/c2t1d0   /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0

In the above output you can found the all the disk which is available in the system.

5. HP-UX display dump devices:

hpx:/> lvlnboot -v

Normally it is showing the boot information in which you can check the dump devices name.

LVM and file system basics in HP-UX

Hello Friends,

In my previous post, you can find the simple way to extend or increase the file system size in HP-UX operating system. So now we need to understand also how these file system is created with LVM. So in my new post, i would try to explain you how we will create LVM and file system in HP-UX operating system.

In this post, I will give you an example for HP-UX 11i v2/v3 version operating system. As my current machine keeping same version OS. You can find the LVM creation for Linux in my other post on my blog.

As you know LVM stands for logical volume management system which are used for file creation. Please find the step by step method to create the LVM in HP-UX operating system as describe below.

1. First we will create the physical volume using free disk space. After that we will create the volume group. to create the physical volume we will use "pvcreate" command.

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hpx:/>pvcreate -f /dev/rdisk/disk1

Physical volume "/dev/rdisk/disk1" has been successfully created.

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Using "pvcreate" command new physical volume group'/dev/rdisk/disk1 has been created.

2. In second step, we will create the new volume group with the help of physical volume. but before running the creation command we need to create a VG directory in /dev location.Once we will create the directory we will change the ownership and permission of the folder respectively.

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hpx:/>mkdir -p /dev/vg00    Note: (you can replace volume group name accordingly) 

hpx:/>chown -R root:root /dev/vg00

hpx:/>chmod -R 755 /dev/vg00

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3. Now we will create a special group device file.In HP-UX each volume group must have a group device special file under its sub directory in /dev. This group DSF is created with the "mknod " command, like any other DSFs the group file must have a major and a minor number.

One of the most important thing while creating the LVM on the HP-UX is major & minor number. For LVM 1.0 volume groups the major number must be 64 and for the LVM 2.0 one must be 128.

For minor number, the first two digits will uniquely identify the volume group and the remaining digits must be 0000.

In our case we’re creating a 1.0 volume group on HP-UX operating system.

hpx:/>cd /dev/vg00

hpx:/dev/vg00>mknod group c 64 0x010000

Now change the ownership to root:sys and the permissions to 640.

hpx:/>chown root:sys group

hpx:/>chmod 640 group

4. Now create the volume group using below command.

hpx:/>vgcreate -s 16 vg00 /dev/disk/disk1

Volume group "/dev/vg00" has been successfully created.

Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg00 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf

In above command , we will create new volume group "vg00" with 4 MB size.

5.  Now your new volume group in HP-UX operating system has been created successfully. You can check the volume group and physical group by using below command.

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hpx:/> vgdisplay -v vg00

--- Volume groups ---

VG Name                     /dev/vg00

VG Write Access         read/write     

VG Status                    available                 

Max LV                       255    

Cur LV                        0      

Open LV                     0      

Max PV                      16     

Cur PV                        2      

Act PV                        2      

Max PE per PV           6000         

VGDA                        2   

PE Size (Mbytes)       16              

Total PE                     26    

Alloc PE                    0       

Free PE                      26    

Total PVG                  0        

Total Spare PVs         0              

Total Spare PVs in use      0 

 --- Physical volumes ---

 PV Name                   /dev/disk/disk1

 PV Status                   available                

 Total PE                    13       

 Free PE                     13       

 Autoswitch                On

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In above output you can see the VG Name & PV Name which we created during LVM creation. Now using these Volume group "vg00" we can able to create file system on HP-UX file system.

6. Now in final step we will create the logical volume group in HP-UX using VG.

hpx:/> lvcreate -n vg00_test -L 256 vg00

Logical volume "/dev/vg00/vg00_test_S2" has been successfully created with

character device "/dev/vg00/rvg00_test_S2".

Logical volume "/dev/vg00/vg00_test_S2" has been successfully extended.

Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg00 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf

If our example the logical volume group name is "vg00_test". If you see the syntax of above command "-n" option is used for new logical volume name and "-L" option is used for specifying the file system size in MB.

hpx:/> lvdisplay  /dev/vg00/vg00_test

Using this command you can check newly created logical volume group on HP-UX operating system.

7. For file system creation in HP-UX, we will use below method step by step.

hpx:/>newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/vg00_test

version 7 layout 393216 sectors, 393216 blocks of size 1024, log size 1024 blocks large files supported

In above syntax, we will create a new file system, now we will create the mount point where we mount this file system

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hpx:/>mkdir /test

hpx:/>mount /dev/vg00/vg00_test /test.

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Using above method /test file system has been created successfully and if you want to check the current size of file system you can use "bdf  /dev/vg00/vg00_test" command.

Hope, this post is useful for you. If you have any questions related this post please comment on it. I will try to provide the simple and step by step solution to you.