Comment 14 for bug 452350

I saw this as well on a server where a forgotten PV label caused the error message.

In my case, I sequentially checked all the partitions and raid volumes with 'pvck' until I found the incorrectly marked one, in my case /dev/sdh1. This partition was part of an MD array, so I failed it from the raid 6 array, removed it, then wiped the label with 'pvremove /dev/sdh1' -ff. It forced me to use the -ff flag in this case, because the PV label incorrectly indicated that it belonged to an active VG. The header was wrong, so using -ff was the correct solution. I re-added /dev/sdh1 back into the array and it resynced without an issue. Problem gone and no further error messages.

In summary, I do not believe this to be a bug, but rather a correctly given error message from LVM where it detects inconsistent or missing data.

The solution I recommend is to hunt down the incorrect PV label and wipe it. Naturally, taking care not to fiddle with the device or partition if it is in use elsewhere when wiping the PV label is a good idea.

I suspect that using pvremove on a device, even when it is in use elsewhere may potentially be safe _because_ the label would not be there in the first place if that particular block was in use. YMMV.