pvdisplay

show detailed information about LVM physical volumes

TLDR

Show every physical volume

$ sudo pvdisplay

Show one specific PV

$ sudo pvdisplay [/dev/sda2]

Include the map of physical extents to logical volumes

$ sudo pvdisplay --maps [/dev/sda2]

Short / columnar output

$ sudo pvdisplay -s

Only show PVs in a given volume group

$ sudo pvdisplay --select "vg_name=[vg0]"

Display sizes in human units (rather than default 2-decimal MiB)

$ sudo pvdisplay --units h

JSON-formatted output

$ sudo pvdisplay --reportformat json

SYNOPSIS

pvdisplay [options] [PhysicalVolume...]pvdisplay -c | --columns [options] [PhysicalVolume...]

pvdisplay prints per-PV information: device name, owning volume group, PV size, physical-extent (PE) size, total / free / allocated extent counts, allocation policy, UUID, and status. With `--maps` it also lists which logical-extent ranges of which LVs each PE belongs to — useful when planning evacuations with `pvmove` or sanity-checking device failures.For scriptable output, prefer `pvs` (short/columnar, tunable column list) or `pvdisplay -c`.

PARAMETERS

PhysicalVolume

Device path (e.g. `/dev/sda2`, `/dev/nvme0n1p3`). Without any, all PVs are listed.

-v, --verbose

Print more detail (repeatable: `-vv`, `-vvv` for more).

-m, --maps

Show the mapping of physical extents on this PV to the logical extents of each LV that uses it.

-s, --short

Short-form output — just name and size.

-c, --colon

Output as a colon-separated single line per PV (scriptable).

-C, --columns

Alias for running `pvs(8)`-style columnar output.

--units u

Report sizes in units u: `b`, `k`/`K`, `m`/`M`, `g`/`G`, `t`/`T`, `h` (human). Lower-case = SI (powers of 1000); upper-case = IEC (powers of 1024).

--select SELECTION

Filter to PVs matching a selection expression (e.g. `vgname=vg0`, `pvsize>10g`).

--reportformat FMT

`basic`, `json`, or `json_std`.

--foreign

Show PVs owned by other hosts (shared storage).

--ignorelockingfailure

Continue even if file/locking fails (read-only operations).

--nolocking

Disable locking (for debugging / read-only rescue).

--help

Show help.

INSTALL

sudo apt install lvm2

sudo dnf install lvm2

sudo pacman -S lvm2

sudo apk add lvm2

sudo zypper install lvm2

nix profile install nixpkgs#lvm2

CAVEATS

Requires root (or `capsysadmin`) to read PV metadata. The device must have been initialized with `pvcreate`; otherwise it does not appear. On systems using `lvmlockd`/`sanlock` for shared storage, add `--foreign` to see PVs owned by other hosts. Very large VGs with many snapshots can produce long `--maps` output — page it.

HISTORY

pvdisplay is part of LVM2, the in-kernel Logical Volume Manager user-space toolset. LVM2 is maintained by Red Hat and distributed under the GPL.