lvm commands are not finding or displaying the expected volumes in RHEL

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • lvm commands do not show my physical volume, volume group, or logical volume anymore.
  • When running pvscan "unknown device" is seen for a device that is being used as a physical volume in a running configuration.
      PV unknown device   VG VolGroup13      lvm2 [656.00 GB / 6.00 GB free]
  • lvm commands are reporting "volume group does not exist" even though it should exist.
  • After multipath config changes, OS cannot see the lvm volumes anymore.
  • Data was written to the first megabyte or head of all physical volume disks.
  • LVM metadata appears to have been lost from one of the disks of a 2 disk LVM.
  • After unpresenting storage devices from the system, certain volume groups are throwing "Couldn't find device" errors and will not activate:

    Couldn't find device with uuid paH2Cp-w92t-lIz2-WznV-ihDJ-dg8M-oFUpMa.
       There are 1 physical volumes missing.
     PV             VG     Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
     /dev/sda2      rootvg lvm2 a-    9.69G    0 
     /dev/sdb1      appsvg lvm2 a-   79.97G    0 
     /dev/sdd1      rootvg lvm2 a-    4.97G 1.97G
     unknown device appsvg lvm2 a-   79.97G    0 
    
  • Removed redundant multipath device, now the system is not showing any LVs.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enteprise Linux (RHEL) 4, 5, 6, 7
  • lvm2

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