The pvs command is a powerful utility in Linux for displaying information about physical volumes (PVs) used by the Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Understanding your physical storage is crucial for effective disk management, and pvs provides a concise yet detailed overview.

Basic Physical Volume Information

To display fundamental details about your physical volumes, simply run the pvs command without any arguments. This will show essential information such as the physical volume name, volume group it belongs to, and its size.

pvs

Verbose Physical Volume Details

For a more in-depth look, including unique identifiers like the UUID, use the verbose option -v. This is particularly useful when you need to differentiate between similar devices or for scripting purposes.

pvs -v

Customizing Output Columns

You can tailor the output to show only the specific columns you need, such as the physical volume name, its associated volume group, and its size. This helps in quickly extracting relevant data.

pvs --columns pv_name,vg_name,pv_size

Human-Readable Size Formatting

To make the size information easier to read, use the --units h option. This will display sizes in human-readable formats (e.g., KB, MB, GB, TB).

pvs --units h

Sorting Physical Volumes

Organize your physical volume list by size using the --sort pv_size option. This can be helpful when analyzing storage allocation and identifying the largest PVs.

pvs --sort pv_size

Filtering by Device

If you want to see information for a specific physical volume or a set of devices, you can provide the device path as an argument. For example, to view information about /dev/sdX1:

pvs /dev/sdX1

Displaying Without Headers

For scripting or when integrating pvs output into other tools, you might want to suppress the header row. Use the --noheadings option for this purpose.

pvs --noheadings

Size in Megabytes

If you prefer to see all sizes consistently in megabytes, use the --units M option.

pvs --units M

Checking for Missing Segments

The --segments option can display warnings if any physical volumes are using missing data segments, which is crucial for identifying potential storage issues.

pvs --segments

Displaying Allocatable and Missing Status

To get a comprehensive status of your physical volumes, including whether they are allocatable and if any parts are missing, use the -o +allocatable,missing option.

pvs -o +allocatable,missing

The pvs command is an essential tool for any system administrator managing LVM storage. By understanding its various options, you can efficiently monitor and manage your physical volumes.