I tried to stop a qemu-img copy or clone and it broke everything. It was fine to "stop" it from the GUI but a process still persisted so I killed the relevant qemu-img and the kernel went crazy. It also may not have helped that I tried to lvremove a different volume (an unused disk). But either way it breaks LVM (you cannot even run lvdisplay) so a reboot is necessary.
Jan 17 06:45:21 testserver kernel: [ 5680.439337] systemd-udevd D 0&nbs........
In short the solution is just to use vgremove for the actual /dev/mapper device:
vgremove /dev/mapper/backups-backuplv
box mnt # mdadm --manage /dev/md8 --stop
mdadm: Cannot get exclusive access to /dev/md8:Perhaps a running process, mounted filesystem or active volume group?
box mnt # lv
lvchange lvconvert lvcreate l........
# first we need a physical volume which we use the pvcreate tool to create
# I create mine on /dev/sdb3
pvcreate /dev/sdb3
dev_is_mpath: failed to get device for 8:19
Physical volume "/dev/sdb3" successfully created
# pvdisplay shows the newly created volume
pvdisplay
"/dev/sdb3" is a new physical volume of "1.35 TiB"
--- NEW Physical volume ---
PV N........
fdisk -lu VPS.img
last_lba(): I don't know how to handle files with mode 81ed
You must set cylinders.
You can do this from the extra functions menu.
Disk VPS.img: 0 MB, 0 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders, total 0 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End ........