I am currently dealing with a multiple disk failure on a Linux LVM Volume Group that is backed up by a RAID-5 md device. One disk has been taken out completely and another one is showing a limited number of corrupt sectors, due to what seems to have been a misbehaving power supply.

The problem is that once an I/O error hits, md takes the array down, since it does not have enough devices for it to be operational. Where md the only one involved, I could mdadm --stop the array and then recreate it to get all devices active again.

Unfortunately, the array is a PV in an LVM volume group and I cannot seem to get the kernel to release it. vgchange -an does not seem to do anything, bar spew out a couple of I/O errors.

I am obviously missing something, but how in the name of -insert-favorite-deity- do I get LVM to release the underlying PV without rebooting the server?