blkdeactivate — utility to deactivate block devices
Contents
Description
The blkdeactivate utility deactivates block devices. For mounted block devices, it attempts to unmount it
automatically before trying to deactivate. The utility currently supports device-mapper devices (DM), in‐
cluding LVM volumes and software RAID MD devices. LVM volumes are handled directly using the lvm(8) com‐
mand, the rest of device-mapper based devices are handled using the dmsetup(8) command. MD devices are
handled using the mdadm(8) command.
Examples
Deactivate all supported block devices found in the system, skipping mounted devices.
# blkdeactivate
Deactivate all supported block devices found in the system, unmounting any mounted devices first, if pos‐
sible.
# blkdeactivate-u
Deactivate the device /dev/vg/lvol0 together with all its holders, unmounting any mounted devices first,
if possible.
# blkdeactivate-u/dev/vg/lvol0
Deactivate all supported block devices found in the system. If the deactivation of a device-mapper device
fails, retry it. Deactivate the whole Volume Group at once when processing an LVM Logical Volume.
# blkdeactivate-u-dretry-lwholevg
Deactivate all supported block devices found in the system. If the deactivation of a device-mapper device
fails, retry it and force removal.
# blkdeactivate-dforce,retryName
blkdeactivate — utility to deactivate block devices
Options
-d|--dmoptionsdm_options
Comma separated list of device-mapper specific options. Accepted dmsetup(8) options are:
retry Retry removal several times in case of failure.
force Force device removal.
-e|--errors
Show errors reported from tools called by blkdeactivate. Without this option, any error messages
from these external tools are suppressed and the blkdeactivate itself provides only a summary mes‐
sage to indicate the device was skipped.
-h|--help
Display the help text.
-l|--lvmoptionslvm_options
Comma-separated list of LVM specific options:
retry Retry removal several times in case of failure.
wholevg
Deactivate the whole LVM Volume Group when processing a Logical Volume. Deactivating the
Volume Group as a whole is quicker than deactivating each Logical Volume separately.
-r|--mdraidoptionsmdraid_options
Comma-separated list of MD RAID specific options:
wait Wait MD device's resync, recovery or reshape action to complete before deactivation.
-m|--mpathoptionsmpath_options
Comma-separated list of device-mapper multipath specific options:
disablequeueing
Disable queueing on all multipath devices before deactivation. This avoids a situation
where blkdeactivate may end up waiting if all the paths are unavailable for any underlying
device-mapper multipath device.
-o|--vdooptionsvdo_options
Comma-separated list of VDO specific options:
configfile=file
Use specified VDO configuration file.
-u|--umount
Unmount a mounted device before trying to deactivate it. Without this option used, a device that
is mounted is not deactivated.
-v, --verbose
Run in verbose mode. Use -vv for even more verbose mode.
See Also
dmsetup(8), lsblk(8), lvm(8), mdadm(8), multipathd(8), vdo(8), umount(8) Red Hat, Inc LVM TOOLS 2.03.31(2) (2025-02-27) BLKDEACTIVATE(8)
Synopsis
blkdeactivate [-ddm_options] [-e] [-h] [-llvm_options] [-mmpath_options] [-rmdraid_options] [-ovdo_options] [-u] [-v] [device]
