PVMOVE(8)                                                                                                              PVMOVE(8)



NAME
       pvmove - move physical extents

SYNOPSIS
       pvmove  [--abort] [--alloc AllocationPolicy] [-b|--background] [-d|--debug] [-h|--help] [-i|--interval Seconds] [--noude-
       vsync]   [-v|--verbose]    [-n|--name    LogicalVolume]    [SourcePhysicalVolume[:PE[-PE]...]    [DestinationPhysicalVol-
       ume[:PE[-PE]...]...]]

DESCRIPTION
       pvmove allows you to move the allocated physical extents (PEs) on SourcePhysicalVolume to one or more other physical vol-
       umes (PVs).  You can optionally specify a source LogicalVolume in which case only extents used by that LV will  be  moved
       to  free (or specified) extents on DestinationPhysicalVolume(s).  If no DestinationPhysicalVolume is specifed, the normal
       allocation rules for the volume group are used.

       If pvmove gets interrupted for any reason (e.g. the machine crashes) then run pvmove  again  without  any  PhysicalVolume
       arguments  to  restart any moves that were in progress from the last checkpoint.  Alternatively use pvmove --abort at any
       time to abort them at the last checkpoint.

       You can run more than one pvmove at once provided they are moving data off  different  SourcePhysicalVolumes,  but  addi-
       tional pvmoves will ignore any logical volumes already in the process of being changed, so some data might not get moved.

       pvmove works as follows:

       1. A temporary 'pvmove' logical volume is created to store details of all the data movements required.

       2.  Every  logical  volume  in the volume group is searched for contiguous data that need moving according to the command
       line arguments.  For each piece of data found, a new segment is added to the end of the pvmove LV.   This  segment  takes
       the  form  of a temporary mirror to copy the data from the original location to a newly-allocated location.  The original
       LV is updated to use the new temporary mirror segment in the pvmove LV instead of accessing the data directly.

       3. The volume group metadata is updated on disk.

       4. The first segment of the pvmove logical volume is activated and starts to mirror the first part of the data.  Only one
       segment 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 temporary mirror
       is in-sync, it breaks that mirror so that only the new location for that data gets used and writes a checkpoint into  the
       volume group metadata on disk.  Then it activates the mirror for the next segment of the pvmove LV.

       6.  When  there  are  no  more segments left to be mirrored, the temporary logical volume is removed and the volume group
       metadata is updated so that the logical volumes reflect the new data locations.

       Note that this new process cannot support the original LVM1 type of on-disk metadata.  Metadata can  be  converted  using
       vgconvert(8).


OPTIONS
       --abort
              Abort any moves in progress.

       --noudevsync
              Disable udev synchronisation. The process will not wait for notification from udev.  It will continue irrespective
              of any possible udev processing in the background.  You should only use this if udev is not running or  has  rules
              that ignore the devices LVM2 creates.

       -b, --background
              Run the daemon in the background.

       -i, --interval Seconds
              Report progress as a percentage at regular intervals.

       -n, --name  LogicalVolume
              Move only the extents belonging to LogicalVolume from SourcePhysicalVolume instead of all allocated extents to the
              destination physical volume(s).


EXAMPLES
       To move all logical extents of any logical volumes on /dev/hda4 to free physical extents elsewhere in the  volume  group,
       giving verbose runtime information, use:

            pvmove -v /dev/hda4


SEE ALSO
       lvm(8), vgconvert(8)



Sistina Software UK                             LVM TOOLS 2.02.84(2) (2011-02-09)                                      PVMOVE(8)