/dev/sda has a holder | Solution

When attempting to erase or wipe your Proxmox server, you may encounter the “/dev/sda has a holder” error. This is typically due to a drive being part of an LVM Volume Group. Below, we propose a solution to this issue.

The Issue

You get the “/dev/sda has a holder” error when you try to erase a disk that was previously part of an LVM Volume Group. You can verify this by running pvs on the terminal which should return something like:

root@prox:~# pvs
  PV         VG        Fmt  Attr PSize    PFree
  /dev/sda   hack-stor lvm2 a--  <465.76g 215.75g
  /dev/sdb3  pve       lvm2 a--   231.88g <16.00g

As you can see, /dev/sda is in fact part of the hack-store VG group.

The Solution

If you are confident you want to wipe the disk, issue the following command to remove the volume group:

root@prox:~# vgremove hack-stor
Do you really want to remove volume group "hack-stor" containing 2 logical volumes? [y/n]: y
Do you really want to remove active logical volume hack-stor/vm-101-disk-0? [y/n]: y
  Logical volume "vm-101-disk-0" successfully removed
Do you really want to remove active logical volume hack-stor/vm-101-disk-3? [y/n]: y
  Logical volume "vm-101-disk-3" successfully removed
  Volume group "hack-stor" successfully removed

That’s it, you’re done!