7.8.2. Duplicate Warnings for Single Paths

The following example shows a duplicate PV warning in which the duplicate devices displayed are both single paths to the same device. In this case, both /dev/sdd and /dev/sdf can be found under the same multipath map in the output to the multipath -ll command.

Found duplicate PV GDjTZf7Y03GJHjteqOwrye2dcSCjdaUi: using **/dev/sdd** not **/dev/sdf**

To prevent this warning from appearing, you can configure a filter in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file to restrict the devices that LVM will search for metadata. The filter is a list of patterns that will be applied to each device found by a scan of /dev (or the directory specified by the dir keyword in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file). Patterns are regular expressions delimited by any character and preceded by a (for accept) or r (for reject). The list is traversed in order, and the first regex that matches a device determines if the device will be accepted or rejected (ignored). Devices that don’t match any patterns are accepted. For general information on LVM filters, see Section 5.5, “Controlling LVM Device Scans with Filters”.

The filter you configure should include all devices that need to be checked for LVM metadata, such as the local hard drive with the root volume group on it and any multipathed devices. By rejecting the underlying paths to a multipath device (such as /dev/sdb, /dev/sdd, and so on) you can avoid these duplicate PV warnings, since each unique metadata area will only be found once on the multipath device itself.

The following examples show filters that will avoid duplicate PV warnings due to multiple storage paths being available.

Once a filter has been configured and the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file has been saved, check the output of these commands to ensure that no physical volumes or volume groups are missing.

# pvscan
# vgscan

You can also test a filter on the fly, without modifying the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file, by adding the --config argument to the LVM command, as in the following example.

# lvs --config 'devices{ filter = [ "a|/dev/emcpower.*|", "r|.*|" ] }'

After configuring an LVM filter, it is recommended that you rebuild the initrd device with the dracut command so that only the necessary devices are scanned upon reboot.