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lvdisplay error: “Failed to create directory /var/lock/lvm. File-based locking initilisation failed.”

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The Problem

On CentOS/RHEL 6.x with Logical Volume Manger, all the LVM commands return locking error immediately after boot up as shown below:

# lvdisplay
Failed to create directory /var/lock/lvm
File-based locking initilisation failed.

The Solution

Above message is getting logged due to a check added in lvm code to verify if the path mentioned for locking_dir option in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file is available or not and then print an error if the path used for locking_dir option is not available. This error is typically observed when /var is created as a separate filesystem. In most cases this happens if the /var/ filesystem is mounted as read-only.

$ grep -i "locking_dir" etc/lvm/lvm.conf 
    # Configuration option global/locking_dir.
    locking_dir = "/var/lock/lvm"

Workaround:

1. Configure the locking_dir option in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf to a path in root (/) filesystem itself, as shown below:

# vi /etc/lvm/lvm.conf
locking_dir = "/run/lock"

2. Make sure that above directory is present on server, or you could create the same manually using following command:

# mkdir -p /run/lock

3. Run the lvm commands by defining temporary locking directory

# lvdisplay --config 'global { locking_dir = "/run/lock" } '
# pvdisplay --config 'global { locking_dir = "/run/lock" } '
# vgdisplay --config 'global { locking_dir = "/run/lock" } '

Permanent Solution:

Mount the /var filesystem with rw option or if the filesystem is read-only due to filesystem corruption, run fsck against the unmounted /var partition to fix it but ensure you have a valid backup before running fsck.

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