This problem was finally resolved with the generous help of Bryn M. Reeves on the inux-lvm at redhat.com list. The difficulty was that the utility kpartx had the lvs opened via their mappings. Further, the mappings were created with the -pp option of kpartx and that option had to be provided to the delete action in order for that to work: # kpartx -d -pp /path/to/logical/volume/name Once the mappings were removed then the lvremove also worked and the volumes were removed. A small point, failure to provide the -pp option to the kpartx -d action does not raise an error. Nor does it remove the mapping however. -- *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel *** James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 Canada L8E 3C3