VGREMOVE(8)

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version 2.03.44 · 14 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 VGREMOVE 💖 — the vgremove girlies' guide (section 8 of the System Manager's Manual, bestie)

okay so. you want to delete a whole volume group. like, the ENTIRE thing. not just a little LV. the whole group chat. and this page — vgremove — is literally the manual for that. she's dramatic, she's powerful, and she will ask you "are you SURE" before she does anything unhinged. let's go 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

vgremove — Remove volume group(s)

like. remove them. multiple. as in plural. she's not picky. 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

vgremove position_args
       [ option_args ]

yes that's the whole thing. short queen. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So vgremove removes one or more VGs. If LVs exist in the VG, a prompt is used to confirm their removal — meaning she's gonna double-check with you before she nukes the LVs living in there, bestie. consent matters 💖

If one or more PVs in the VG are lost, consider vgreduce --removemissing to make the VG metadata consistent again. (iykyk — sometimes the move isn't deleting, it's cleaning up first.) 🧚

Repeat the force option (-ff) to forcibly remove LVs in the VG without confirmation. TWO F's. not one. TWO. do not come to me crying with a single -f 🙈

🔥 USAGE 🔥

vgremove VG|Tag|Select ...
       [ -f|--force ... ]
       [ -S|--select String ]
       [ --noudevsync ]
       [ --reportformat basic|json|json_std ]
       [ COMMON_OPTIONS ]

—

Common options for lvm:

       [ -d|--debug ... ]
       [ -h|--help ]
       [ -q|--quiet ... ]
       [ -t|--test ]
       [ -v|--verbose ... ]
       [ -y|--yes ]
       [ --commandprofile String ]
       [ --config String ]
       [ --devices PV ]
       [ --devicesfile String ]
       [ --driverloaded y|n ]
       [ --journal String ]
       [ --lockopt String ]
       [ --longhelp ]
       [ --nohints ]
       [ --nolocking ]
       [ --profile String ]
       [ --version ]

not me listing all of these. icon behavior, actually. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

okay bestie, deep breaths, here's the whole roster, no skips, no summaries, we're doing ALL of them ⭐

  • --commandprofile String — The command profile to use for command configuration. See lvm.conf(5) for more information about profiles.
  • --config String — Config settings for the command. These override lvm.conf(5) settings. The String arg uses the same format as lvm.conf(5), 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 file and/or syslog (if configured). repeat up to SIX times, she's got layers ✨
  • --devices PV — Restricts the devices that are visible and accessible to the command. Devices not listed will appear to be missing. This option can be repeated, or accepts a comma-separated list of devices. This overrides the devices file. (she's doing a vibe check on your devices 🔍)
  • --devicesfile String — A file listing devices that LVM should use. The file must exist in /etc/lvm/devices/ and is managed with the lvmdevices(8) command. This overrides the lvm.conf(5) devices/devicesfile and devices/use_devicesfile settings.
  • --driverloaded y|n — If set to no, the command will not attempt to use device-mapper. For testing and debugging.
  • -f|--force ... — Override various checks, confirmations and protections. Use with extreme caution. ⚠️ girl. GIRL. extreme caution. she said it, not me.
  • -h|--help — Display help text.
  • --journal String — Record information in the systemd journal. This information is in addition to information enabled by the lvm.conf log/journal setting. command: record information about the command. output: record the default command output. debug: record full command debugging. (three moods: command, output, debug 💜)
  • --lockopt String — Used to pass options for special cases to lvmlockd. See lvmlockd(8) for more information.
  • --longhelp — Display long help text. (the long one. the director's cut.)
  • --nohints — Do not use the hints file to locate devices for PVs. A command may read more devices to find PVs when hints are not used. The command will still perform standard hint file invalidation where appropriate.
  • --nolocking — Disable locking. Use with caution, concurrent commands may produce incorrect results. 😭 caution again. the caution is cautioning.
  • --noudevsync — Disables udev synchronization. The process will not wait for notification from udev. It will continue irrespective of any possible udev processing in the background. Only use this if udev is not running or has rules that ignore the devices LVM creates. (she's just gonna... walk away. not wait. not look back. 💀)
  • --profile String — 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 any prompts with answer 'no'. (repeat once = the automatic no-button. love that for us 🙈)
  • --reportformat basic|json|json_std — Overrides current output format for reports which is defined globally by the report/output_format setting in lvm.conf(5). basic is the original format with columns and rows. If there is more than one report per command, each report is prefixed with the report name for identification. json produces report output in JSON format. json_std produces report output in JSON format which is more compliant with the JSON standard. See lvmreport(7) for more information.
  • -S|--select String — Select objects for processing and reporting based on specified criteria. The criteria syntax is described by --select help and lvmreport(7). For reporting commands, one row is displayed for each object matching the criteria. See --options help for selectable object fields. Rows can be displayed with an additional "selected" field (-o selected) showing 1 if the row matches the selection and 0 otherwise. For non-reporting commands which process LVM entities, the selection is used to choose items to process.
  • -t|--test — Run in test mode. Commands will not update metadata. This is implemented by disabling all metadata writing but nevertheless returning success to the calling function. This may lead to unusual error messages in multi-stage operations if a tool relies on reading back metadata it believes has changed but hasn't. (imagine believing something changed and it did NOT. the delusion. the betrayal. 😭)
  • -v|--verbose ... — Set verbose level. Repeat from 1 to 4 times to increase the detail of messages sent to stdout and stderr.
  • --version — Display version information.
  • -y|--yes — Do not prompt for confirmation interactively but always assume the answer yes. Use with extreme caution. (For automatic no, see -qq.) 🚨 extreme. caution. again. bestie she is BEGGING you to be careful.

🎀 VARIABLES 🎀

  • VG — Volume Group name. See lvm(8) for valid names.
  • Tag — Tag name. See lvm(8) for information about tag names and using tags in place of a VG, LV or PV.
  • Select — Select indicates that a required positional parameter can be omitted if the --select option is used. No arg appears in this position. (a ghost placeholder, if you will 👻)
  • String — See 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 values, regardless of capitalization, e.g. 'k' and 'K' both refer to 1024. The default input unit is specified by letter, followed by |UNIT. UNIT represents other possible input units: b|B is bytes, s|S is sectors of 512 bytes, k|K is KiB, m|M is MiB, g|G is GiB, t|T is TiB, p|P is PiB, e|E is EiB. (This should not be confused with the output control --units, where capital letters mean multiple of 1000.) 🧮 yes the caps-lock-5000 thing is a DIFFERENT thing. do not conflate them fr fr.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

See lvm(8) for information about environment variables used by lvm. For example, LVM_VG_NAME can generally be substituted for a required VG parameter. (so you can just... vibe with the env var instead of typing it. obsessed 🫶)

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

lvm(8), lvm.conf(5), lvmconfig(8), lvmdevices(8),

pvchange(8), pvck(8), pvcreate(8), pvdisplay(8), pvmove(8), pvremove(8), pvresize(8), pvs(8), pvscan(8),

vgcfgbackup(8), vgcfgrestore(8), vgchange(8), vgck(8), vgcreate(8), vgconvert(8), vgdisplay(8), vgexport(8), vgextend(8), vgimport(8), vgimportclone(8), vgimportdevices(8), vgmerge(8), vgmknodes(8), vgreduce(8), vgremove(8), vgrename(8), vgs(8), vgscan(8), vgsplit(8),

lvcreate(8), lvchange(8), lvconvert(8), lvdisplay(8), lvextend(8), lvreduce(8), lvremove(8), lvrename(8), lvresize(8), lvs(8), lvscan(8),

lvm-fullreport(8), lvm-lvpoll(8), blkdeactivate(8), lvmdump(8),

dmeventd(8), lvmpolld(8), lvmlockd(8), lvmlockctl(8), lvmdbusd(8), fsadm(8),

lvmsystemid(7), lvmreport(7), lvmcache(7), lvmraid(7), lvmthin(7), lvmvdo(7), lvmautoactivation(7)

that's the whole friend group right there. go say hi to all of them. 🦋✨

⭐ one last reminder from your girl: -f twice if you really mean it, -y only if you've fully accepted the consequences, and always, ALWAYS check with vgs first. periodt. 💅

okay byeeee, this page was brought to you by Red Hat, Inc., running LVM TOOLS 2.03.44(2), dated 2026-10-27 — so like, a little vintage, a little iconic, we love her 🎀💖 stay safe out there bestie!!

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