[root@localhost dev]# vgrename stuff store
Volume group "stuff" still has active LVs

as you can see, the LVs are still active and I can't change the name.

How do I stop it so that I can change the name of the VG?

Thanks.

IIRC I did `lvchange -an` the logical volumes first, then `vgrename`, then `lvchange -ay` again.

uselpa listed the correct procedure. You will probably need to unmount any mounted logical volumes before these commands will work however. I usually do this type of low level stuff from runlevel 1, so filesystem unmounting is easier (no pesky users or processes holding the filesystems open). Also, as opposed to running "lvchange -an" on each logical volume, you can do "vgchange -an" on the volume group and hit all the logical volumes at once. Then after you've renamed, run "vgchange -ay" to activate all the logical volumes with one command.

Don't forget to modify your /etc/fstab entries to reflect the new name of the volume group.

Thanks, it worked.

I did go to runlevel 1, and still cannot unmount the logical volumes. When I say 'umount -a' it says 'umount: /: device is busy' and of course, as you mentioned, when I try to do vgchange -an w/o unmounting, it complains. Can you please help with this?

Thanks.

Do your work from a liveCD that has LVM support.

Ok, I will try this. Thank you.

Ok, here is what I did:

- I first edited /etc/fstab to change all "VolGroup00"s to "vg00"s
- I booted with Knoppix 5.1 live cd
- vgrename VolGroup00 vg00 --> success
- Reboot --> I get kernel panic. It says it cannot find VolGroup00. It does the same thing when I edit the kernel arguments to contain root=/dev/vg00/LogVol00 instead of root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00, it does not work.

Thank you in advance for your help

Does anyone know what I should do now?

Thank you.

how far did you get before it give you kernel panic? Can you paste your grub.conf and fstab?

Hello,

You need to change the contents of the nash init file inside your initrd ramdisk to remove references to your old volume names. There are typically three. The initrd file is ( on Fedora at least ) a compressed loopback filesystem. You need to:

1. gunzip initrd-2.6....img
2. mkdir ramdisk
3. mount -t ext2 -o loop initrd-2.6...img ramdisk
4. cd ramdisk

There will be a nash script which is called init in Fedora and linuxrc on other distros. In my init file there are three references to VolGroup00. These and possibly all others will need to be changed.

echo Scanning logical volumes
lvm vgscan --ignorelockingfailure
echo Activating logical volumes
lvm vgchange -ay --ignorelockingfailure VolGroup00
resume /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01
echo Creating root device.
mkrootdev -t ext3 -o defaults,ro /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

Please change these references in a text editor, umount ramdisk, and recompress (gzip) the edited image. You will also need to, if you haven't already, change all references to the old volume name in the /dev directory. These may have been changed by the rename command.

Let me know if this works.

Wow! Thank you very much for the detailed explanations. I appreciate them. For the last couple days, I did not have time to work on it. I will let you know when I try these.

Hello,

In my previous message I stated that the initrd file was a compressed loopback filesystem. This was the old method which may be still in use in some distros. The new method in Fedora and other distros is a compressed cpio archive. To access this you need a temporary editing directory in which you will extract the cpio archive contents.


1. mdkir initrd-edit && cd initrd-edit
2. gzip -dc /boot/initrd-2.6...img | cpio -i -c
3. edit contents of directory, specifically init or linuxrc nash script

To repackage the initrd ( or initramfs )

1. cd /initrd-edit
2. find . | cpio --quiet -c -o >../newinitrd
3. cd ..
4. gzip -9 <newinitrd >initrd-2.6...img
5. copy the new initrd image to /boot

As I don't know which distro you use you will have to check which method of initrd creation yours uses. Have a look at the mkinitrd or mkinitramfs bash script ( usually in /sbin ) or simply gunzip the initrd file and look at its file type.

[root@localhost ~]# file initrd*
initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp.img: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)

Let me know if this works.

Thank you very much, I could not look into this because I found some problem with the MoBo I am getting a replacement. When I get it, I will work on this too. Thank you again for detailed answers.

Or you can just use mkinitrd from the live CD to regenerate initrd.