Proxmox won't install - "A volume group called pve already exists".

[victorhooi]

I'm trying to install Proxmox 5.1 onto a server with a SATA SSD on it. (It also has a M.2 NVMe drive as well).

However, the installation is error-ing out when it gets to the first step of creating partitions, with the error message:

unable to create volume group 'pve'.

If I press Ctrl + Alt + F2, and go to the console, I see an error message about "A volume group called pve already exists":



It's possible this is from a previous failed PVE installation?

Is there some way of using the Proxmox install media or installation wizard to wipe those disks and start again? (I didn't see an option to wipe/format disks in the installation wizard).

 

[udo]

Hi,
perhaps on the M.2 NVMe is allready an pve-VG?

Udo

 

[victorhooi]

Aha, yes, that's possible as I did try a few installs before (first on USB sticks), then on NVM M.2 (but the motherboard seemed to have issues booting from UEFI).

Is there an easy way of using the ProxMox boot media to destroy those VG's on drives?

 

[fabian]

Aha, yes, that's possible as I did try a few installs before (first on USB sticks), then on NVM M.2 (but the motherboard seemed to have issues booting from UEFI).

Is there an easy way of using the ProxMox boot media to destroy those VG's on drives?

if you boot into the debug mode, you get dumped into a minimal busybox shell as a first step. if you are comfortable with such an environment, you should be able to use "lvm" to remove the LVs/VGs/PVs. otherwise, you can press ctrl+d to start the installation, and then immediately hit the cancel/abort button, which will drop you into a shell inside the installer chroot, where you have a fully-featured, albeit minimal PVE environment (with all the LVM binaries, not just the core 'lvm' one).

 

[victorhooi]

I can confirm I was able to get this done with the above instructions:

1. Boot the Proxmox installer USB
2. Select Debug Mode
3. Press Ctrl + D to start the installer wizard.
4. Click on abort
5. Run "vgdisplay" to display the LVM PG's.
6. Run "vgremove pve" to remove the pve PG.

Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/228...titions-on-all-drives-before-installing-12-04

 

[victorhooi]

I had to do this again recently - in case anybody else reads this, using wipefs -a /dev/<devicename> also did the trick.

There is more info about the command in this post:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/recommended-way-of-creating-multiple-osds-per-nvme-disk.52252/

 

[Helio Mendonça]

Hi
I run into this problem when I was trying to install a newer Proxmox version (v6.3) on my server.
I have a older one (v5.4) installed in a M.2 disk.
My idea was to keep that M.2 disk unchanged to go back to it if something went wrong with this new installation.
So I connected a new SSD in the server and tried to installed the new version on it.
And I got the error mentioned on the title of this thread.
But previously I got this question: Detected existing 'pve' Volume Group(s)! Do you want to rename VG backed by PV '/dev/nvme0n1p3' to 'pve-OLD-48xxxxB9' or cancel the installation? That I answered to cancel since I had the fear of not be able to go back to the old Proxmox.

So my question is: If I accept instead keep going with the installation and find later that it is not working, can I simply remove the SSD and boot from the old Proxmox again?

Regards
Hélio

 

[Helio Mendonça]

I know, I know that I can avoid all this by removing the M.2 disk but I wonder if I can simply "ignore" the disk with the old Proxmox.
Please remind that my main goal is to do a Proxmox test installation on a SSD along with the presence of an old installation done in a M.2 disk.
Why?
Because is some goes wrong (I have a lot of hardware dependencies that can be a problem) I could just remove the SSD and have the initial system back!

 

[udo]

I know, I know that I can avoid all this by removing the M.2 disk but I wonder if I can simply "ignore" the disk with the old Proxmox.
Please remind that my main goal is to do a Proxmox test installation on a SSD along with the presence of an old installation done in a M.2 disk.
Why?
Because is some goes wrong (I have a lot of hardware dependencies that can be a problem) I could just remove the SSD and have the initial system back!

Hi,
you can boot an rescue-system and rename the lvm volumegroup (like vgrename pve pve-old).
If you want your installation back, you can renamed pve-old back.

Udo