What were you trying to do that didn't work?

One of our customer observed that the installation fails on RHEL 9 when performing kickstart installation to preserve an PV created in the previous installation.

For example,

Do installation first with the layout where we create to PV as part of different VG.
For example using the VG "cs" for OS and using VG "data" as a data partition.

clearpart --none --initlabel
# Disk partitioning information
part pv.1 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=vda --size=7008
part pv.2 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=vda --size=1000
part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=vda --size=600
volgroup cs --pesize=4096 pv.1
volgroup data --pesize=4096 pv.2
logvol / --fstype="xfs" --size=6000 --name=root --vgname=cs
logvol /home --fstype="xfs" --size=1000 --name=home --vgname=cs
logvol /data --fstype="xfs" --size=500 --name=data --vgname=data

Now if we want to preserve this "/data" partition, on the next installation we have the option to use the "--noformat" option for the part "pv.2" and VG "data" so that its preserved.

clearpart --list=vda1,vda2
# Disk partitioning information
part pv.1 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=vda --size=7008
part pv.2 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=vda --onpart=vda3 --noformat
part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=vda --size=600
volgroup cs --pesize=4096 pv.1
volgroup data --noformat
logvol / --fstype="xfs" --size=6000 --name=root --vgname=cs
logvol /home --fstype="xfs" --size=1000 --name=home --vgname=cs
logvol /data --name=data --vgname=data --noformat

However the OS installation fails with the error because it cannot locate "data" VG.

DEBUG:program:Return code: 0
DEBUG:blivet:                             LVMVolumeGroupDevice.update_sysfs_path: data ; status: False ;
DEBUG:blivet:                 LVMLogicalVolumeDevice._setup: data-data ; orig: False ; status: False ; controllable: True ;
INFO:program:Running [99] lvm lvchange -ay data/data --config= log {level=7 file=/tmp/lvm.log syslog=0} ...
INFO:program:stdout[99]: 
INFO:program:stderr[99]:   Volume group "data" not found
  Cannot process volume group data

We see that the system.device file which is created by Anaconda installer does not have the data of the "/dev/vda3" because that is never added into this file since vgcreate command did not run for that VG since it was already present form previous installation.

# LVM uses devices listed in this file.
# Created by LVM command vgcreate pid 3561 at Wed Apr 30 08:10:45 2025
# HASH=1123818934
PRODUCT_UUID=5a937ddf-5c72-4657-b1cf-9ef0bc05d1e4
VERSION=1.1.3
IDTYPE=devname IDNAME=/dev/vda2 DEVNAME=/dev/vda2 PVID=BquelTaUax9gb7lI85jf7sIBu9RWzbre PART=2

This issue is not seen with RHEL 8.10 (since it does not have /etc/lvm/devices/system.devices file)

This issue is also not present in the recent CentOS 9 Stream ISO, even though the same /etc/lvm/devices/system.devices file does exist there during installation.

What is the impact of this issue to you?

Due to this, we are not able to preserve existing partition, when installing new OS on RHEL 9

Please provide the package NVR for which the bug is seen:

Anaconda ISO of RHEL 9.5

How reproducible is this bug?:

Everytime

Steps to reproduce

Expected results

Anaconda should be able to activate the PV and VG which are being used with "–noformat" and complete the installation 

Actual results

Anaconda is not able to activate PV and VG which used with "–noformat" and fail with the python exception traceback.