How to rename root volume group or logical volume in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10
  • Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

Issue

  • How to rename root Volume Group or Logical Volume in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Resolution

  NOTE    Make sure you have a proper, healthy backup of needed/important data before proceeding. Caution! Understand that this process DOES require downtime, as we will need to power-down and boot to rescue mode using a RHEL DVD/ISO in order to safely make this change.

  1. Find downtime, and boot the system into rescue mode. During step 4 select Skip/Skip to shell.

  2. Without chrooting rename the existing Volume Group (VG) using vgrename:

# vgrename oldvg newvg
  1. Rename the Logical Volume (LV) with lvrename:
# lvrename /dev/newvg/oldlv /dev/newvg/newlv

  1. Once VG and LV names are changed, follow this process to manually build your chroot and chroot into /

  2. Update /etc/fstab with the new VG/LV names for all old VG/LV entries:

/dev/mapper/newvg-newlv  /  xfs  defaults  1  1
  1. Update /etc/default/grub with the new VG/LV names for all old VG/LV entries:
  # vi /etc/default/grub

  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=newvg/newlv rd.lvm.lv=newvg/newlv1 crashkernel=auto  vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun16 vconsole.keymap=us "

  1. Ensure that /boot or /boot/efi is properly mounted and rebuild initramfs for the newest expected kernel.

  2. Take a backup and update-grub with the new VG and LV names:

    • For RHEL9 release:

            # cp /boot/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.bak

      # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg --update-bls-cmdline

      Note: Since RHEL9.3, the default behavior of grub2-mkconfig is changed. Refer to Change in the default behavior of grub2-mkconfig.

    • For RHEL7 and RHEL8 releases on BIOS-based machines:

            # cp /boot/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.bak

      # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

    • For RHEL7 and RHEL8 releases on UEFI-based machines:

      # cp /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg.bak

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg

  3. If the below error occurs while generating grub configuration file, please refer to After renaming LVM volume group, receiving "/usr/sbin/grub2-probe: error: failed to get canonical path".

/usr/sbin/grub2-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of ‘/dev/mapper/rhelnew1-root’.
  1. Once all the steps above are completed, exit the rescue shell, remove the DVD/ISO, and boot the system normally.
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