--abort

Abort any pvmove operations in progress. If a pvmove was started with the --atomic option, then all LVswill remain on the source PV. Otherwise, segments that have been moved will remain on the destinationPV, while unmoved segments will remain on the source PV.

--alloc

Determines the allocation policy when a command needs to allocate Physical Extents (PEs) from the VG.Each VG and LV has an allocation policy which can be changed with vgchange/lvchange, or overriden onthe command line. normal applies common sense rules such as not placing parallel stripes on the samePV. inherit applies the VG policy to an LV. contiguous requires new PEs be placed adjacent to exist‐ing PEs. cling places new PEs on the same PV as existing PEs in the same stripe of the LV. If thereare sufficient PEs for an allocation, but normal does not use them, anywhere will use them even if itreduces performance, e.g. by placing two stripes on the same PV. Optional positional PV args on thecommand line can also be used to limit which PVs the command will use for allocation. See lvm(8) formore information about allocation.

--atomic

Makes a pvmove operation atomic, ensuring that all affected LVs are moved to the destination PV, ornone are if the operation is aborted.

-A|--autobackup

Specifies if metadata should be backed up automatically after a change. Enabling this is stronglyadvised! See vgcfgbackup(8) for more information.

-b|--background

If the operation requires polling, this option causes the command to return before the operation iscomplete, and polling is done in the background.

--commandprofile

The command profile to use for command configuration. See lvm.conf(5) for more information about pro‐files.

--config

Config settings for the command. These override lvm.conf settings. The String arg uses the same formatas lvm.conf, or may use section/field syntax. See lvm.conf(5) for more information about config.

-d|--debug

Set debug level. Repeat from 1 to 6 times to increase the detail of messages sent to the log fileand/or syslog (if configured).

--driverloaded

If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-mapper. For testing and debugging.

-h|--help

Display help text.

-i|--interval

Report progress at regular intervals.

--longhelp

Display long help text.

-n|--name

Move only the extents belonging to the named LV.

--noudevsync

Disables udev synchronisation. The process will not wait for notification from udev. It will continueirrespective of any possible udev processing in the background. Only use this if udev is not running orhas rules that ignore the devices LVM creates.

--profile

An alias for --commandprofile or --metadataprofile, depending on the command.

-q|--quiet

Suppress output and log messages. Overrides --debug and --verbose. Repeat once to also suppress anyprompts with answer 'no'.

--reportformat

Overrides current output format for reports which is defined globally by the report/output_format set‐ting in lvm.conf. basic is the original format with columns and rows. If there is more than onereport per command, each report is prefixed with the report name for identification. json producesreport output in JSON format. See lvmreport(7) for more information.

-t|--test

Run in test mode. Commands will not update metadata. This is implemented by disabling all metadatawriting but nevertheless returning success to the calling function. This may lead to unusual error mes‐sages in multi-stage operations if a tool relies on reading back metadata it believes has changed buthasn't.

-v|--verbose

Set verbose level. Repeat from 1 to 4 times to increase the detail of messages sent to stdout andstderr.

--version

Display version information.

-y|--yes

Do not prompt for confirmation interactively but always assume the answer yes. Use with extreme cau‐tion. (For automatic no, see -qq.)VARIABLESPVPhysical Volume name, a device path under /dev. For commands managing physical extents, a PV posi‐tional arg generally accepts a suffix indicating a range (or multiple ranges) of physical extents(PEs). When the first PE is omitted, it defaults to the start of the device, and when the last PE isomitted it defaults to end. Start and end range (inclusive): PV[:PE-PE]... Start and length range(counting from 0): PV[:PE+PE]...StringSee the option description for information about the string content.Size[UNIT]Size is an input number that accepts an optional unit. Input units are always treated as base two val‐ues, regardless of capitalization, e.g. 'k' and 'K' both refer to 1024. The default input unit isspecified by letter, followed by |UNIT. UNIT represents other possible input units: bBsSkKmMgGtTpPeE.b|B is bytes, s|S is sectors of 512 bytes, k|K is kilobytes, m|M is megabytes, g|G is gigabytes, t|T isterabytes, p|P is petabytes, e|E is exabytes. (This should not be confused with the output control

--units,

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLESSee lvm(8) for information about environment variables used by lvm. For example, LVM_VG_NAME can generally besubstituted for a required VG parameter.NOTESpvmove works as follows:1. A temporary 'pvmove' LV is created to store details of all the data movements required.2. Every LV in the VG is searched for contiguous data that need moving according to the command line argu‐ments. For each piece of data found, a new segment is added to the end of the pvmove LV. This segment takesthe form of a temporary mirror to copy the data from the original location to a newly allocated location. Theoriginal LV is updated to use the new temporary mirror segment in the pvmove LV instead of accessing the datadirectly.3. The VG metadata is updated on disk.4. The first segment of the pvmove LV is activated and starts to mirror the first part of the data. Only onesegment is mirrored at once as this is usually more efficient.5. A daemon repeatedly checks progress at the specified time interval. When it detects that the first tempo‐rary mirror is in sync, it breaks that mirror so that only the new location for that data gets used and writesa checkpoint into the VG metadata on disk. Then it activates the mirror for the next segment of the pvmoveLV.6. When there are no more segments left to be mirrored, the temporary LV is removed and the VG metadata isupdated so that the LVs reflect the new data locations.Note that this new process cannot support the original LVM1 type of on-disk metadata. Metadata can be con‐verted using vgconvert(8).If the --atomic option is used, a slightly different approach is used for the move. Again, a temporary'pvmove' LV is created to store the details of all the data movements required. This temporary LV containsall the segments of the various LVs that need to be moved. However, in this case, an identical LV is allo‐cated that contains the same number of segments and a mirror is created to copy the contents from the firsttemporary LV to the second. After a complete copy is made, the temporary LVs are removed, leaving behind thesegments on the destination PV. If an abort is issued during the move, all LVs being moved will remain on thesource PV.EXAMPLESMove all physical extents that are used by simple LVs on the specified PV to free physical extents elsewherein the VG.pvmove /dev/sdb1Use a specific destination PV when moving physical extents.pvmove /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1Move extents belonging to a single LV.pvmove -n lvol1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1Rather than moving the contents of an entire device, it is possible to move a range of physical extents, forexample numbers 1000 to 1999 inclusive on the specified PV.pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999A range of physical extents to move can be specified as start+length. For example, starting from PE 1000.(Counting starts from 0, so this refers to the 1001st to the 2000th PE inclusive.)pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000+1000Move a range of physical extents to a specific PV (which must have sufficient free extents).pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1Move a range of physical extents to specific new extents on a new PV.pvmove /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1:0-999If the source and destination are on the same disk, the anywhere allocation policy is needed.pvmove --alloc anywhere /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdb1:0-999The part of a specific LV present within in a range of physical extents can also be picked out and moved.pvmove -n lvol1 /dev/sdb1:1000-1999 /dev/sdc1